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ON 


THE  TRUE,  THE  BEAUTIFUL, 
AND  THE  GOOD. 


BY  SI.  V.  COUSIN. 


INCREASED    BY 


an  fniu!}  J tt. 


TRANSLATED,   WITH   THE    APPROBATION   OF    M.  COUSIN.    HT 


0.  W.  WIGHT, 


TRANSLATOR  OF  COUSIN'S  "  COURSE   OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  MODERN    PI1ILOSO1MI  Y,"  AMERICAN 

EDITOR   OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON,  BART.,   AUTHOR 

OF  "TITO  ROMANCE   OF  ABELARD  ANT>  HF.I.O1SK."  ETC.,  ETC. 


•  God  is  the  life  of  the  soul,  as  the  soul  is  the  life  of  the  body." 

TICK  PLATONISTS  AND  TIIK  FATHERS. 


NEW  YORK: 
IV    APPLETON  &  CO.,  346  it   348  BROADWAY, 

AND  16  LITTLE  BRITAIN,   LONDON. 
M  DCCC  LV. 


i£r.ter«d  According  to  Act  ot  Congress,  in  the  year  ISM. 
P.Y  D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  So-*'  orn 
District  of  New  York. 


SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON,  BART., 

JprofesBor  of  logic  anfc  fRctayfynsits  in   tfje  tSnttursitn  of  EUtnbuvafj ; 

WHO    HAS   CLEARLY    ELUCIDATED,    AND,    WITH    GREAT    ERUDITION, 
SKETCHED    THE    HISTOEY     OF    THE     DOCTEINE    OK 

COMMON    SENSE  ; 

WHO,    FOLLOWING    IN    THE   FOOTSTEPS    OF   HIS    ILLUSTRIOUS    COUNTRYMAN.    REID, 
HAS     ESTABLISHED     THE      DOCTRINE     OF     THE 

IMMEDIATENESS  OF  PERCEPTION, 

THEREBY    FORTIFYING   PHILOSOPHY    AGAINST   THE    ASSAULTS   OF   SKEPTICISM ; 

WHO,    TAKING    A     STEP     IN     ADVANCE     OF    ALL     OTHERS, 

HAS  GIVEN  TO  THE  WORLD  A  DOCTRINE  OF  THE 

CONDITIONED, 

THE    ORIGINALITY    AND    IMPORTANCE    OF    WHICH    ARE    ACKNOWLEDGED    BY    THE 
FEW  QUALIFIED   TO   JUDGE   IN   SUCH    MATTERS  ;  WHOSE 

NEW  ANALYTIC  OF  LOGICAL  FORMS 
COMPLETES    THE     HITHERTO   UNFINISHED    WORKS    OF   ARISTOTLE  ; 

THIS   TRANSLATION   OF  M.  COUSIN'S 

futures  0n  tire  I  rut,  tk  §outiM,  unto 

IS   RESPECTFULLY  DEDICATED, 

IN     ADMIRATION     OF     A     PROFOUND     AND     INDEPENDENT     THINKER, 

OF    AN    INCOMPARABLE   MASTER  OF   PHILOSOPHIC   CRITICISM; 

AS  A  TOKEN  OF  ESTEEM  FOR  A  MAN  IN  WHOM  GENIUS 

AND   ALMOST   UNEQUALLED    LEARNING 

HAVE    BEEN    ADORNED    BY 
TRUTH,    BEAUT*,    AND    GOODNESS    OF    LIFE. 


611744 


AUTHOR'S    PREFACE. 


FOK  some  time  past  we  have  been  asked,  on  various 
sides,  to  collect  in  a  body  of  doctrine  the  theories  scat- 
tered in  our  different  works,  and  to  sum  up,  in  just  pro- 
portions, what  men  are  pleased  to  call  our  philosophy. 

This  resume  was  wholly  made.  We  had  only  to  take 
again  the  lectures  already  quite  old,  but  little  known,  be- 
cause they  belonged  to  a  time  when  the  courses  of  the 
Faculte  des  Lettres  had  scarcely  any  influence  beyond 
the  Quartier  Latin,  and,  also,  because  they  could  be  found 
only  in  a  considerable  collection,  comprising  all  our  first 
instruction,  from  1815  to  1821.1  These  lectures  were 
there,  as  it  were,  lost  in  the  crowd.  We  have  drawn 
them  hence,  and  give  them  apart,  severely  corrected,  in 
the  hope  that  they  will  thus  be  accessible  to  a  greater 


1 1st  Series  of  our  work,  Oours  de  Vfllstoire  de  la  Philosop7tie  Moderne,  five 
volumes. 


8  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

number  of  readers,  and  that  their  true  character  .will  the 
better  appear. 

The  eighteen  lectures  that  compose  this  volume  have 
in  fact  the  particular  trait  that,  if  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy furnishes  their  frame-work,  philosophy  itself  occu- 

H 

pies  in  them  the  first  place,  and  that,  instead  of  re- 
searches of  erudition  and  criticism,  they  present  a  regu- 
lar exposition  of  the  doctrine  which  was  at  first  fixed 
in  our  mind,  which  has  not  ceased  to  preside  over  our 
labors. 

This  book,  then,  contains  the  abridged  but  exact  ex- 
pression of  our  convictions  on  the  fundamental  points  of 
philosophic  science.  In  it  will  be  openly  seen  the 
method  that  is  the  soul  of  our  enterprise,  our  principles, 
our  processes,  our  results. 

Under  these  three  heads,  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  the 
Good,  we  embrace  psychology,  placed  by  us  at  the  head 
of  all  philosophy,  aesthetics,  ethics,  natural  right,  even 
public  right  to  a  certain  extent,  finally  theodicea,  that 
perilous  rendes-vom  of  all  systems,  where  different 
principles  are  condemned  or  justified  by  their  conse- 
quences. 

It  is  the  affair  of  our  book  to  plead  its  own  cause.  We 
only  desire  that  it  may  be  appreciated  and  judged  accord- 
ing to  what  it  really  is.  and  not  according  to  an  opinion 
too  much  accredited. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  9 

Eclecticism  is  persistently  represented  as  the  doctrine 
to  which  men  deign  to  attach  our  name.  We  declare 
that  eclecticism  is  very  dear  to  us,  for  it  is  in  our  eyes 
the  light  of  the  history  of  philosophy ;  but  the  source 
of  that  light  is  elsewhere.  Eclecticism  is  one  of  the 
most  important  and  most  useful  applications  of  the  phi- 
losophy which  we  teach,  but  it  is  not  its  principle. 

Our  true  doctrine,  our  true  flag  is  spiritualism,  that 
philosophy  as  solid  as  generous,  which  began  with<  Soc- 
rates and  Plato,  which  the  Gospel  has  spread  abroad  in 
the  world,  which  Descartes  put  under  the  severe  forms 
of  modern  genius,  which  in  the  seventeenth  century  was 
one  of  the  glories  and  forces  of  our  country,  which  per- 
ished with  the  national  grandeur  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, which  at  the  commencement  of  the  present  century 
M.  Royer-Collard  came  to  re-establish  in  public  instruc- 
tion, whilst  M.  de  Chateaubriand,.  Madame  de  Stae'l,  and 
M.  Quatremere  de  Quincy  transferred  it  into  literature 
and  the  arts.  To  it  is  rightly  given  the  name  of  spiritu- 
alism, because  its  character  in  fact  is  that  of  subordi- 
nating the  senses  to  the  spirit,  and  tending,  by  all  the 
means  that  reason  acknowledges,  to  elevate  and  ennoble 
man.  It  teaches  the  spirituality  of  the  soul,  the  liberty 
and  responsibility  of  human  actions,  moral  obligation, 
disinterested  virtue,  the  dignity  of  justice,  the  beauty  of 

charity ;  and  beyond  the  limits  of  this  world  it  shows  a 

1* 


10  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

God,  author  and  type  of  humanity,  who,  after  having 
evidently  made  man  for  an  excellent  end,  will  not  aban- 
don him  in  the  mysterious  development  of  his  destiny. 
This  philosophy  is  the  natural  ally  of  all  good  causes. 
It  sustains  religious  sentiment ;  it  seconds  true  art,  poesy 
worthy  of  the  name,  and  a  great  literature  ;  it  is  the  sup- 
port of  right ;  it  equally  repels  the  craft  of  the  dema- 
gogue and  tyranny ;  it  teaches  all  men  to  respect  and 
value  themselves,  and,  little  by  little,  it  conducts  human 
societies  to  the  true  republic,  that  dream  of  all  generous 
souls  which  in  our  times  can  be  realized  in  Europe  only 
by  constitutional  monarchy. 

To  aid,  with  all  our  power,  in  setting  up,  defending, 
and  propagating  this  noble  philosophy,  such  is  the 
object  that  early  inspired  us,  that  has  sustained  during 
a  career  already  lengthy,  in  which  difficulties  have  not 
been  wanting.  Thank  God,  time  has  rather  strength- 
ened than  weakened  our  convictions,  and  we  end  as  we 
began :  this  new  edition  of  one  of  our  first  works  is  a 
last  effort  in  favor  of  the  holy  cause  for  which  we  have 
combated  nearly  forty  years. 

May  our  voice  be  heard  by  new  generations  as  it  was 
by  the  serious  youth  of  the  Restoration !  Yes,  it  is  par- 
ticularly to  you  that  we  address  this  work,  young  men 
whom  we  no  longer  know,  but  whom  we  bear  in  our 
heart,  because  you  are  the  seed  and  the  hope  of  the 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  11 

future.  We  have  shown  you  the  principle  of  our  evils 
and  their  remedy.  If  you  love  liberty  and  your  coun- 
try, shun  what  has  destroyed  them.  Far  from  you  be 
that  sad  philosophy  which  preaches  to  you  materialism 
and  atheism  as  new  doctrines  destined  to  regenerate  the 
world  :  they  kill,  it  is  true,  but  they  do  not  regenerate. 
Do  not  listen  to  those  superficial  spirits  who  give  them 
selves  out  as  profound  thinkers,  because  after  Voltaire 
they  have  discovered  difficulties  in  Christianity :  meas- 
ure your  progress  in  philosophy  by  your  progress  in  ten- 
der veneration  for  the  religion  of  the  Gospel.  Be  well 
persuaded  that,  in  France,  democracy  will  always  tra- 
verse liberty,  that  it  brings  all  right  into  disorder,  and 
through  disorder  into  dictatorship.  Ask,  then,  only  a 
moderated  liberty,  and  attach  yourself  to  that  with  all 
the  powers  of  your  soul.  Do  not  bend  the  knee  to  for- 
tune, but  accustom  yourselves  to  bow  to  law.  Entertain 
the  noble  sentiment  of  respect.  Know  how  to  admire, — 
possess  the  Avorship  of  great  men  and  great  things. 
Reject  that  enervating  literature,  b}^  turns  gross  and 
refined,  which  delights  in  painting  the  miseries  of  hu- 
man nature,  which  caresses  all  our  weaknesses,  which 
pays  court  to  the  senses  and  the  imagination,  instead  of 
speaking  to  the  soul  and  awakening  thought.  Guard 
yourselves  against  the  malady  of  our  century,  that  fatal 
taste  of  an  accommodating  life,  incompatible  with  all 


12  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

generous  ambition.  Whatever  career  you  embrace,  pro- 
pose to  yourselves  an  elevated  aim,  and  put  in  its  service 
an  unalterable  constancy.  /Sursum  corda,  value  highly 
your  heart,  wherein  is  seen  all  philosophy,  that  which 
we  have  retained  from  all  our  studies,  which  we  have 
taught  to  your  predecessors,  which  we  leave  to  you  as 
our  last  word,  our  final  lecture. 

V.  COUSIN. 

June  15,  1853. 


A  too  indulgent  public  having  promptly  rendered 
necessary  a  new  edition  of  this  book,  we  are  forced  to 
render  it  less  unworthy  of  the  suffrages  which  it  has 
obtained,  by  reviewing  it  with  severe  attention,  by  intro- 
ducing a  mass  of  corrections  in  detail,  and  a  consider- 
able number  of  additions,  among  which  the  only  ones 
that  need  be  indicated  here  are  some  pages  on  Chris- 
tianity at  the  end  of  Lecture  X*VL,  and  the  notes  placed 
as  an  Appendix1  at  the  end  of  the  volume,  on  various 


The  Appendix  has  been  translated  by  Mr.  N.  E.  S.  A.  Hamilton  of 
the  British  Museum,  who  is  alone  entitled  to  credit  and  alone  respon- 
sible.— TB. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  13 

works  of  French  masters  which  we  have  quite  recently 
seen  in  England,  which  have  confirmed  and  increased 
our  old  admiration  for  our  national  art  of  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

November  1,  1853. 


TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE. 


THE  nature  of  this  publication  is  sufficiently  explained 
in  the  preface  of  M.  Cousin. 

We  have  attempted  to  render  his  book,  without 
comment,  faithfully  into  English.  Not  only  have  we 
endeavored  to  give  his  thought  without  increase  or 
diminution,  but  have  also  tried  to  preserve  the  main 
•characteristics  of  his  style.  On  the  one  hand,  we 
have  carefully  shunned  idioms  peculiar  to  the  French ; 
on  the  other,  when  permitted  by  the  laws  of  structure 
common  to  both  languages,  we  have  followed  the  gen- 
eral order  of  sentences,  even  the  succession  of  words. 
It  has  been  our  aim  to  make  this  work  wholly  Cousin's 
in  substance,  and  in  form  as  nearly  his  as  possible, 
with  a  total  change  of  dress.  That,  however,  we  may 
have  nowhere  missed  a  shade  of  meaning,  nowhere- 
introduced  a  gallicism,  is  too  much  to  be  hoped  for, 
too  much  to  be  demanded. 

M.  Cousin,  in  his  Philosophical  Discussions,  defines 
the  terms  that  he  uses.  In  the  translation  of  these  we 
have  maintained  uniformity,  so  that  in  this  regard  no 
farther  explanation  is  necessary. 


16  TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE. 

This  is,  perhaps,  in  a  philosophical  point  of  view, 
the  most  important  of  all  M.  Cousin's  works,  for  it 
contains  a  complete  summary  and  lucid  exposition  of 
the  various  parts  of  his  system.  It  is  now  the  last 
word  of  European  philosophy,  and  merits  serious  and 
thoughtful  attention. 

This  and  many  more  like  it,  are  needed  in  these 
times,  when  noisy  and  pretentious  demagogues  are 
speaking  of  metaphysics  with  idiotic  laughter,  when 
utilitarian  statesmen  are  sneering  at  philosophy,  when 
undisciplined  sectarians  of  every  kind  are  decrying  it ; 
when,  too,  earnest  men,  in  state  and  church,  men  on 
whose  shoulders  the  social  world  really  rests,  are  in- 
voking philosophy,  not  only  as  the  best  instrument  of- 
the  highest  culture  and  the  severest  mental  discipline, 
but  also  as  the  best  human  means  of  guiding  politics 
towards  the  eternally  true  and  the  eternally  just,  of  pre- 
serving theology  from  the  aberrations  of  a  zeal  without 
knowledge,  and  from  the  perversion  of  the  interested 
and  the  cunning ;  when  many  an  artist,  who  feels  the 
nobility  of  his  calling,  who  would  address  the  mind  of 
man  rather  than  his  senses,  is  asking  a  generous  philoso- 
phy to  explain  to  him  that  ravishing  and  torturing  Ideal 
which  is  ever  eluding  his  grasp,  which  often  discourages 
unless  understood ;  when,  above  all,  devout  and  tender 
souls  are  learning  to  prize  philosophy,  since,  in  harmony 
with  Revelation,  it  strengthens  their  belief  in  God, 
freedom,  immortality. 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE.  17 

Grateful  to  an  indulgent  public,  on  both  sides  of  the 
ocean,  for  a  kindly  and  very  favorable  reception  of  our 
version  of  M.  Cousin's  "  Course  of  the  History  of  Modern 
Philosophy,"  we  add  this  translation  of  his  "Lectures 
on  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good,"  hoping  that 
his  explanation  of  human  nature  will  aid  some  in  solving 
the  grave  problem  of  life, — for  there  are  always  those, 
and  the  most  gifted,  too,  who  feel  the  need  of  under- 
standing themselves, — believing  that  his  eloquence,  his 
elevated  sentiment,  and  elevated  thought,  will  afford 
gratification  to  a  refined  taste,  a  chaste  imagination, 

and  a  disciplined  mind 

O.  W.  WIGHT. 

LONDON,  Dec.  21,  1853 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


THE  Publishers  have  to  express  their  thanks  to  M.  COUSIN 
for  his  cordial  concurrence,  and  especially  for  his  kindness  in 
transmitting  the  sheets  of  the  French  original  as  printed,  so 
that  this  translation  appears  almost  simultaneously  with  it. 

EDINBTJHGH,  38  GEOKGE-STKEET, 
Dec.  26,  1853. 


THE   STEM. 


CONTENTS 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE Page      7 

TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE 15 

DISCOURSE  PRONOUNCED   AT  THE  OPENING  OF  THE  COURSE. — 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 25 

Spirit  and  general  principles  of  the  Course. — Object  of  the  Lectures  of  this 
year: — application  of  the  principles  of  which  an  exposition  is  given,  to  the 
three  Problems  of  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good. 

PART  FIRST.— THE  TRUE. 

LECTURE  I. — THE  EXISTENCE   OF  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY 
PRINCIPLES 89 

Two  great  wants,  that  of  absolute  truths,  and  that  of  absolute  truths  that 
may  not  be  chimeras.  To  satisfy  these  two  wants  is  the  problem  of  the 
philosophy  of  our  time. — Universal  and  necessary  principles. — Examples 
of  different  kinds  of  such  principles. — Distinction  between  universal  and 
necessary  principles  and  general  principles. — Experience  alone  is  inca- 
pable of  explaining  universal  and  necessary  principles,  and  also  incapable 
of  dispensing  with  them  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  the  sensible 
world. — Eeason  as  being  that  faculty  of  ours  which  discovers  to  us  these 
principles. — The  study  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  introduces 
us  to  the  highest  parts  of  philosophy. 

LECTURE  II. — ORIGIN  OF  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY  PRINCI- 
PLES       61 

Resume  of  the  preceding  Lecture.  A  new  question,  that  of  the  origin  of 
universal  and  necessary  principles. — Danger  of  this  question,  and  its  ne- 
cessity.— Different  forms  under  which  truth  presents  itself  to  us,  and  the 
successive  order  of  these  forms  :  theory  of  spontaneity  and  reflection. — 
The  primitive  form  of  principles ;  abstraction  that  disengages  them  from 


20  CONTENTS. 

that  form,  and  gives  them  their  actual  form. — Examination  and  refutation 
of  the  theory  that  attempts  to  explain  the  origin  of  principles  by  an  induc- 
tion founded  on  particular  notions. 

LECTtTHE   III. Ox   THE  VALUE   OF   UNIVERSAL   AND  NECESSARY 

PRINCIPLES Page    65 

Examination  and  refutation  of  Kant's  skepticism.  —  Recurrence  to  the 
theory  of  spontaneity  and  reflection. 

LECTURE  IV. — GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  PRINCIPLES 75 

Object  of  the  lecture :  What  is  the  ultimate  basis  of  absolute  truth  ?— 
Four  hypotheses :  Absolute  truth  may  reside  either  in  us,  in  particular 
beings  and  the  world,  in  itself,  or  in  God.  1.  "We  perceive  absolute  truth, 
we  do  not  constitute  it.  2.  Particular  beings  participate  in  absolute  truth, 
but  do  not  explain  it ;  refutation  of  Aristotle.  3.  Truth  does  not  exist  in 
itself;  defence  of  Plato.  4.  Truth  resides  in  God. — Plato ;  St.  Augustine ; 
Descartes ;  Malebranche ;  Feuelon ;  Bossuet ;  Leibnitz. — Truth  the  medi- 
ator between  God  and  man. — Essential  distinctions. 

LECTURE  V. — ON  MYSTICISM 102 

Distinction  between  the  philosophy  that  we  profess  and  mysticism.  Mysti- 
cism consists  in  pretending  to  know  God  without  an  intermediary. — Two 
sorts  of  mysticism. — Mysticism  of  sentiment.  Theory  of  sensibility.  Two 
sensibilities — the  one  external,  the  other  internal,  and  corresponding  to 
the  soul  as  external  sensibility  corresponds  to  nature. — Legitimate  part  of 
sentiment. — Its  aberrations. — Philosophical  mysticism.  Plotinus :  God,  or 
absolute  unity,  perceived  without  an  intermediary  by  pure  thought. — 
Ecstasy. — Mixture  of  superstition  and  abstraction  in  mysticism. — Conclu- 
sion of  the  first  part  of  the  course. 


PART  SECOND.— THE  BEAUTIFUL, 

LECTURE  VI. — THE  BEAUTIFUL  IN  THE  MIND  ON  MAN 123 

The  method  that  must  govern  researches  on  the  beautiful  and  art  is,  as  in 
the  investigation  of  the  true,  to  commence  by  psychology. — Faculties  of 
the  soul  that  unite  in  the  perception  of  the  beautiful. — The  senses  give 
only  the  agreeable  ;  reason  alone  gives  the  idea  of  the  beautiful. — Refuta- 
tion of  empiricism,  that  confounds  the  agreeable  and  the  beautiful. — Pre- 
eminence of  reason.— Sentiment  of  the  beautiful;  different  from  sensation 
and  desire. — Distinction  between  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  and  that 
of  the  sublime. — Imagination. — Influence  of  sentiment  on  imagination. — 
Influence  of  imagination  on  sentiment. — Theory  of  taste. 


CONTENTS.  21 

LECTTTRE  VII. — THE  BEAUTIFUL  IN  OBJECTS Page  140 

Eefutatiou  of  different  theories  on  the  nature  of  the  beautiful :  the  beautiful 
cannot  be  reduced  to  what  is  useful. — Nor  to  convenience. — Nor  to  pro- 
portion.— Essential  characters  of  the  beautiful. — Different  kinds  of  beau- 
ties. The  beautiful  and  the  sublime.  Physical  beauty.  Intellectual 
beauty.  Moral  beauty. — Ideal  beauty :  it  is  especially  moral  beauty. — 
God,  the  first  principle  of  the  beautiful. — Theory  of  Plato. 

LECTURE  VIII. — ON  ART 154 

Genius : — its  attribute  is  creative  power. — Eefutation  of  the  opinion  that  art 
is  the  imitation  of  nature. — M.  Eineric  David,  and  M.  Quatremere  de 
Quincy. — Eefutation  of  the  theory  of  illusion.  That  dramatic  art  has  not 
solely  for  its  end  to  excite  the  passions  of  terror  and  pity. — Nor  even  di- 
rectly the  moral  and  religious  sentiment. — The  proper  and  direct  object  of 
art  is  to  produce  the  idea  and  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful ;  this  idea 
and  this  sentiment  purify  and  elevate  the  soul  by  the  affinity  between  the 
beautiful  and  the  good,  and  by  the  relation  of  ideal  beauty  to  its  principle, 
which  is  God. — True  mission  of  art. 


LECTURE  IX. — THE  DIFFERENT  ARTS 165 

Expression  is  the  general  law  of  art. — Division  of  arts. — Distinction  between 
liberal  arts  and  trades. — Eloquence  itself,  philosophy,  and  history  do  not 
make  a  part  of  the  fine  arts. — That  the  arts  gain  nothing  by  encroaching 
upon  each  other,  and  usurping  each  other's  means  and  processes. — Classi- 
fication of  the  arts : — its  true  principle  is  expression. — Comparison  of  arts 
with  each  other. — Poetry  the  first  of  arts. 

LECTURE  X. — FRENCH  ART  IN  THE.  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  . .  178 

Expression  not  only  serves  to  appreciate  the  different  arts,  but  the  different 
schools  of  art.  Example  : — French  art  in  the  seventeenth  century.  French 
poetry: — Corneille.  Eacine.  Moliere.  La  Fontaine.  Boileau. —  Paint- 
ing:—  Lesueur.  Poussin.  Le  Lorrain.  Champagne.  —  Engraving. — 
Sculpture : — Sarrazin.  The  Anguiers.  Girardon.  Pnjet. — Le  Notre. — 
Architecture. 


PART  THIRD.— THE  GOOD. 

LECTURE  XI. — PRIMARY  NOTIONS  OF  COMMON  SENSE 215 

Extent  of  the  question  of  the  good. — Position  of  the  question  according  to 
the  psychological  method:  What  is,  in  regard  to  the  good,  the  natural 
belief  of  mankind  ? — The  natural  beliefs  of  humanity  must  not  be  sought 


22  CONTENTS. 

in  a  pretended  state  of  nature. — Study  of  the  sentiments  and  ideas  of  men 
in  languages,  in  life,  in  consciousness. — Disinterestedness  and  devoted- 
ness. —  Liberty.  —  Esteem  and  contempt. — Eespect.  —  Admiration  and 
indignation.  —  Dignity.  —  Empire  of  opinion. — Eidicule.  —  Eegret  and 
repentance.  —  Natural  and  necessary  foundations  of  all  justice.  —  Dis- 
tinction between  fact  and  right. — Common  sense,  true  and  false  phi- 
losophy. 

LECTURE  XII. — THE  ETHICS  OF  INTEREST Page  229 

Exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  interest. — What  there  is  of  truth  in  this  doc- 
trine.— Its  defects.  1st.  It  confounds  liberty  and  desire,  and  thereby 
abolishes  liberty.  2d.  It  cannot  explain  the  fundamental  distinction  be- 
tween good  and  evil.  3d.  It  cannot  explain  obligation  and  duty.  4th.  Nor 
right.  5th.  Nor  the  principle  of  merit  and  demerit. — Consequences  of  the 
ethics  of  interest :  that  they  cannot  admit  a  providence,  and  lead  to  des- 
potism. 

LECTURE  XIII. — OTHER  DEFECTIVE  PRINCIPLES 255 

The  ethics  of  sentiment. — The  ethics  founded  on  the  principle  of  the 
interest  of  the  greatest  number. — The  ethics  founded  on  the  will  of  God 
alone. — The  ethics  founded  on  the  punishments  and  rewards  of  another 
life. 

LECTURE  XIV. — TRUE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS 274 

Description  of  the  different  facts  that  compose  the  moral  phenomena. — 
Analysis  of  each  of  these  facts : — 1st,  Judgment  and  idea  of  the  good. 
That  this  judgment  is  absolute.  Eolation  between  the  true  and  the  good. 
— 2d,  Obligation.  Refutation  of  the  doctrine  of  Kant  that  draws  the  idea 
of  the  good  from  obligation  instead  of  founding  obligation  on  the  idea  of 
the  good. — 3d,  Liberty,  and  the  moral  notions  attached  to  the  notion  of 
liberty. — 4th,  Principle  of  merit  and  demerit.  Punishments  and  rewards. 
—  5th,  Moral  sentiments. — Harmony  of  all  these  facts  in  nature  and 
science. 

LECTURE  XV. — PRIVATE  AND  PUBLIC  ETHICS 301 

Application  of  the  preceding  principles. — General  formula  of  interest,— to 
obey  reason. — Eule  for  judging  whether  an  action  is  or  is  not  conformed 
to  reason, — to  elevate  the  motive  of  this  action  into  a  maxim  of  universal 
legislation. — ladividual  ethics.  It  is  not  towards  the  individual,  but 
towards  the  moral  person  that  one  is  obligated.  Principle  of  all  individual 
duties, — to  respect  and  develop  the  moral  person. — Social  ethics, — duties 
of  justice  and  duties  of  charity. — Civil  society.  Government.  Law.  The 
right  to  punish. 


CONTENTS.  23 

LECTUEE  XVI. — GOD   THE   PKINCIPLE    OF   THE   IDEA    OF  THE 
GOOD Page  325 

Principle  on  which  true  theodicea  rests.  God  the  last  foundation  of  moral 
truth,  of  the  good,  and  of  the  moral  person. — Liberty  of  God. — The  divine 
justice  and  charity. — God  the  sanction  of  the  moral  law.  Immortality  of 
the  soul ;  argument  from  merit  and  demerit ;  argument  from  the  simplicity 
of  the  soul;  argument  from  final  causes. — Religious  sentiment. — Adora- 
tion.— Worship. — Moral  beauty  of  Christianity. 

LECTUEE  XVII. — EESUME  OF  DOCTRINE 346 

Review  of  the  doctrine  contained  in  these  lectures,  and  the  three  orders  of 
facts  on  which  this  doctrine  rests,  with  the  relation  of  each  one  of  them 
to  the  modern  school  that  has  recognized  and  developed  it,  but  almost  al- 
ways exaggerated  it. — Experience  and  empiricism. — Reason  and  idealism. 
— Sentiment  and  mysticism. — Theodicea.  Defects  of  different  known  sys- 
tems.— The  process  that  conducts  to  true  theodicea,  and  the  character  of 
certainty  and  reality  that  this  process  gives  to  it. 

APPENDIX  .  .   371 


LECTURES 

ON 

THE  TRUE,  THE  BEAUTIFUL,  AND  THE  GOOD. 


DISCOUKSE 

* '         / 

PRONOUNCED  AT  THE  OPENING  OF  THE  COURSE, 
DECEMBEE  '4,  1817, 

PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTTTBY, 

Spirit  and  general  principles  of  the  Course. — Object  of  the  Lectures  of  this 
year : — application  of  the  principles  of  which  an  exposition  is  given,  to 
the  three  Problems  of  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good. 

IT  seems  natural  that  a  century,  in  its  beginning,  should  borrow 
its  philosophy  from  the  century  that  preceded  it.  But,  as  free 
and  intelligent  beings,  we  are  not  born  merely  to  continue  our 
predecessors,  but  to  increase  their  work,  and  also  to  do  our  own. 
We  cannot  accept  from  them  an  inheritance  except  under  the 
condition  of  improving  it.  Our  first  duty  is,  then,  to  render  to 
ourselves  an  account  of  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
to  recognize  its  character  and  its  principles,  the  problems  which 
it  agitated,  and  the  solutions  which  it  gave  of  them ;  to  discern, 
in  fine,  what  it  transmits  to  us  of  the  true  and  the  productive, 
and  what  it  also  leaves  of  the  sterile  and  the  false,  in  order  that 
with  reflective  choice,  we  may  embrace  the  former  and  reject  the 
latter.1  Placed  at  the  entrance  of  the  new  times,  let  us  know, 

1  We  have  so  much  felt  the  necessity  of  understanding  well  the  philosophy 
of  the  century  that  ours  succeeds,  that  three  times  we  have  undertaken  th*> 

2 


26  OPENING    DISCOURSE. 

first  of  all,  with  what  views  we  would  occupy  ourselves.  More- 
over? — why  should  I  not  say  it  ? — after  two  years  of  instruction, 
in  which  the  professor,  in  some  sort,  has  been  investigating  him- 
self, one  has  a  right  to  demand  of  him  what  he  is ;  what  are  his 
most  general  principles  on  all  the  essential  parts  of  philosophic 
science ;  what  flag,  in  fine,  ia  the  midst  of  parties  which  contend 
with  each  other  so  violently,  he  proposes  for  you,  young  men, 
who  frequent  this  auditory,  acd  who  are  called  upon  to  partici- 
pate in  a  destiny  still  so  uncertain  and  so  obscure  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  to  follow. 

It  is  not  patriotism,  it  is  a  profound  sentiment  of  truth  and 
justice,  which  makes  us  place  the  whole  philosophy  now  expanded 
in  the  world  under  the  invocation  of  the  name  of  Descartes. 
Yes,  the  whole  of  modern  philosophy  is  the  work  of  this  great 
man,  for  it  owes  to  him  the  spirit  that  animates  it,  and  the 
method  that  constitutes  its  power. 

After  the  downfall  of  scholasticism  and  the  mournful  disrup- 
tures  of  tie  sixteenth  century,  the  first  object  which  the  bold 
good  sense  of  Descartes  proposed  to  itself  was  to  make  philosophy 
a  human  science,  like  astronomy,  physiology,  medicine,  subject 
to  the  same  uncertainties  and  t©  the  same  aberrations,  but  capa- 
ble also  of  the  same  progress. 

Descartes  encountered  the  skepticism  spread  on  every 'side  in 
the  train  of  so  many  revolutions,  ambitious  hypotheses,  born  out 
of  the  first  use  of  an  ill-regulated  liberty,  and  the  old  formulas 
surviving  the  ruins  of  scholasticism.  In  his  courageous  passion 
for  truth,  he  resolved  to  reject,  provisorily  at  least,  all  the  ideas 
that  hitherto  he  had  received  without  controlling  them,  firmly 
decided  not  to  admit  any  but  those  which,  after  a  serious  exami- 
nation, might  appear  to  him  evident.  But  he  perceived  that 

history  of  philosophy  in  the  eighteenth  century,  here  first,  in  1818,  then  in 
1819  and  1820,  and  that  is  the  subject  of  the  last  three  volumes  of  the  1st 
Series  of  our  works,  finally,  we  resumed  it  in  1829,  vol.  ii.  andiii.  of  the.2d 
Series. 


PHILOSOPHY    IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.  27 

there  was  one  thing  which  he  could  not  reject,  even  provisorily, 
in  his  universal  doubt, — that  thing  was  the  existence  itself  of  his 
doubt,  that  is  to  say,  of  his  thought;  for  although  all  the  rest 
might  be  only  an  illusion,  this  fact,  that  he  thought,  could  not 
be  an  illusion.  Descartes,  therefore,  stopped  at  this  fact,  of  an 
irresistible  evidence,  as  at  the  first  truth  which  he  could  accept 
without  fear.  Recognizing  at  the  same  time  that  thought  is  the 
necessary  instrument  of  all  the  investigations  which  he  might 
propose  to  himself,  as  well  as  the  instrument  of  the  human  race 
in  the  acquisition  of  its  natural  knowledges,1  he  devoted  himself 
to  a  regular  study  of  it,  to  the  analysis  of  thought  as  the  condi- 
tion of  all  legitimate  philosophy,  and  upon  this  solid  foundation 
he  reared  a  doctrine  of  a  character  at  once  certain  and  living, 
capable  of  resisting  skepticism,  exempt  from  hypotheses,  and 
affranchised  from  the  formulas  of  the  schools. 

Thus  the  analysis  of  thought,  and  of  the  mind  which  is  the 
subject  of  it,  that  is  to  say,  psychology,  has  become  the  point  of 
departure,  the  most  general  principle,  the  important  method  of 
modern  philosophy.* 

Nevertheless,  it  must  indeed  be  owned,  philosophy  has  oot  en- 
tirely lost,  and  sometimes  still  retains,  since  Descartes  and  in 
Descartes  himself,  its  old  habits.  It  rarely  belongs  to  the  same 
man  to  open  and  run  a  career,  aad  usually  the  inventor  succumbs 
under  the  weight  of  his  own  invention.  So  Descartes,  after 
having  so  well  placed  the  point  of  departure  for  all  philosophical 
investigation,  more  than  once  forgets  analysis,  and  returns,  at 
least  in  form,  to  the  ancient  philosophy.3  The  true  method, 

1  This  word  was  used  by  the  old  English  writers,  and  there  is  no  reason 
why  it  should  not  be  retained. 

2  On  the  method -of  Descartes,   see   1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  20:  2d 
Series,  vol.  i.,  lecture  2 ;  vol.  ii.,  leetwre  11 ;  3d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  Philosophic 
Jtoderne,  as  well  as  Fragment*  de  Philosophic  Carteeienne;  5th  Series,  In- 
struction Publique,  -voL  ii.,  Defense  de  V  Universite.  et  de  la  Philosophic,  p. 
112,  etc. 

s  On  this  return  to  the  scholastic  form  in  Descartes,  see  1st  Series,  vol  iv., 
lecture  12,  especially  three  articles  of  the  Journal  des  Savants,  August,  Sep- 
tember, and  October,  1850,  in  which  w<e  have  examined  anew  the  principles 


28  OPENING    DISCOURSE. 

again,  is  more  than  once  effaced  in  the  hands  of  his  first  succes- 
sors, under  the  always  increasing  influence  of  the  mathematical 
method. 

Two  periods  may  be  distinguished  in  the  Cartesian  era, — one 
in  which  the  method,  in  its  newness,  is  often  misconceived ;  the 
other,  in  which  one  is  forced,  at  least,  to  re-enter  the  salutary 
way  opened  by  Descartes.  To  the  first  belong  Malebranche, 
Spinoza,  Leibnitz  himself;  to  the  second,  the  philosophers  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Without  doubt  Malebranche,  upon  some  points,  descended 
very  far  into  interior  investigation  ;  but  most  of  the  time  he  gave 
himself  up  to  wander  in  an  imaginary  world,  and  lost  sight  of 
the  real  world.  It  is  not  a  method  that  is  wanting  to  Spinoza, 
but  a  good  method ;  his  error  consists  in  having  applied  to  phi- 
losophy the  geometrical  method,  which  proceeds  by  axioms,  defi- 
nitions, theorems,  corollaries ;  no  one  has  made  less  use  of  the 
psychological  method  ;  that  is  the  principle  and  the  condemna- 
tion of  his  system.  The  Nouveaux  Essais  sur  V Entendement 
Humain  exhibit  Leibnitz  opposing  observation  to_observation, 
analysis  to  analysis ;  but  his  genius  usually  hovers  over  science, 
instead  of  advancing  in  it  step  by  step ;  hence  the  results  at 
which  he  arrives  are  often  only  brilliant  hypotheses,  for  example, 
the  pre-established  harmony,  now  relegated  among  the  analogous 
hypotheses  of  occasional  causes  and  a  plastic  mediator.  In  gen- 
eral, the  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  by  not  employing 
with  sufficient  rigor  and  firmness  the  method  with  which  Des- 
cartes had  armed  it,  produced  little  else  than  systems,  ingenious 
without  doubt,  bold  and  profound,  but  often  also  rash, — systems 
that  have  failed  to  keep  their  place  in  science.1  In  fact,  nothing 
is  durable  except  that  which  is  founded  upon  a  sound  method ; 


of  Cartesianism,  a  propos  the  Leibnitii  Animadversiones  ad  Cartesii  Principia 
Philosophic^. 

1  See  on  Malebranche,  Spinoza,  and  Leibnitz,  2d  Series,  vol.  ii.,  lectures 
11  and  12 ;  3d  Series,  vol.  iv.,  Introduction  mix  CEuvres  PhilosopJiiques  de  M. 
de  £irant  p.  288  ;  and  the  Fragments  d-e  Philosophic  Cartesienne,  passim. 


PHILOSOPHY    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY.  29 

time  destroys  all  the  rest ;  time,  which  re-collects,  fecundates,  ag- 
grandizes the  least  germs  of  truth  deposited  in  the  humblest 
analyses,  strikes  without  pity,  engulfs  hypotheses,  even  those  of 
genius.  Time  takes  a  step,  and  arbitrary  systems  are  overturned  ; 
the  statues  of  their  authors  alone  remain  standing  over  their 
ruins.  The  task  of  the  friend  of  truth  is  to  search  for  the  useful 
remains  of  them,  that  survive  and  can  serve  for  new  and  more 
solid  constructions. 

The  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  opens  the  second 
period  of  the  Cartesian  era ;  it  proposed  to  itself  to  apply  the 
method  already  discovered  and  too  much  neglected, — it  applied 
itself  to  the  analysis  of  thought.  Disabused  of  ambitious  and 
sterile  attempts,  and,  like  Descartes,  disdainful  of  the  past,  the 
eighteenth  century  dared  to  think  that  every  thing  in  philosophy 
was  to  be  done  over  again,  and  that,  in  order  not  to  wander 
anew,  it  was  necessary  to  set  out  with  the,  modest  study  of  man. 
Instead,  therefore,  of  building  up  all  at  once  systems  risked  upon 
the  universality  of  things,  it  undertook  to  examine  what  man 
knows,  what  he  can  know ;  it  brought  back  entire  philosophy  to 
the  study  ot  our  faculties,  as  physics  had  just  been  brought  back 
to  the  study  of  the  properties  of  bodies, — which  was  giving  to 
philosophy,  if  not  its  end,  at  least  its  true  beginning. 

The  great  schools  which  divide  the  eighteenth  century  are  the 
English  and  French  school,  the  Scotch  school,  and  the  German 
school,  that  is  to  say,  the  school  of  Locke  and  Condillac,  that  of 
Reid,  that  of  Kant.  It  is  impossible  to  misconceive  the  common 
principle  which  animates  them,  the  unity  of  their  method.  When 
one  examines  with  impartiality  the  method  of  Locke,  he  sees  that 
it  consists  in  the  analysis  of  thought;  and  it  is  thereby  that 
Locke  is  a  disciple,  not  of  Bacon  and  Hobbes,  but  of  our  great 
countryman,  Descartes.1  To  study  the  human  understanding  as 
it  is  in  each  one  of  us,  to  recognize  its  powers,  and  also  its  limits, 
is  the  problem  which  the  English  philosopher  proposed  to  him- 

1  On  Locke,  see  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  1,  especially  2d  Series,  vol.  iii., 
Examen  du  Systeme  de  Locke. 


30  OPENING    DISCOURSE. 

self,  and  which  he  attempted  to  solve.  I  do  not  wish  to  judge 
here  of  the  solution  which  he  gave  of  this  problem ;  I  limit  my- 
self to  indicating  clearly  what  was  for  him  the  fundamental 
problem.  Condillac,  the  French  disciple  of  Locke,  made  himself 
everywhere  the  apostle  of  analysis  ;  and  analysis  was  also  in  him, 
or  at  least  should  have  been,  the  study  of  thought.  No  philoso- 
pher, not  even  Spinoza,  has  wandered  farther  than  Condillac1  from 
the  true  experimental  method,  and  has  strayed  farther  on  the 
route  of  abstractions,  even  verbal  abstractions ;  but,  strange 
enough,  no  one  is  severer  than  he  against  hypotheses,  save  that 
of  the  statue-man.  The  author  of  the  Traite  des  Sensations  has 
very  unfaithfully  practised  analysis ;  but  he  speaks  of  it  without 
cessation.  The  Scotch  school  combats  Locke  and  Condillac ;  it 
combats  them,  but  with  their  own  arms,  with  the  same  method 
which  it  pretends  to  apply  better.8  In  Germany,  Kant  wishes  to 
replace  in  light  and  honor  the  superior  element  of  human  con- 
sciousness, left  in  the  shade,  and  decried  by  the  philosophy  of  his 
times ;  and  for  that  end,  what  does  he  do  ?  He  undertakes  a 
profound  examination  of  the  faculty  of  knowing  ;  the  title  of  his 
principal  work  is,  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  *  it  is -a  critique, 
that  is  to  say  again,  an  analysis ;  the  method  of  Kant  is  then  no 
other  than  that  of  Locke  and  Reid.  Follow  it  until  it  reaches 
the  hands  of  Fichte,4  the  successor  of  Kant,  who  died  but  a  few 
years  since ;  there,  again,  the  analysis  of  thought  is  given  as  the 
foundation  of  philosophy.  Kant  was  so  firmly  established  in  the 
subject  of  knowledge,  that  he  could  scarcely  go  out  of  it — that, 
in  fact,  he  never  did  legitimately  go  out  of  it.  Fichte  plunged 
into  the  subject  of  knowledge  so  deeply  that  he  buried  himself 
in  it,  and  absorbed  in  the  human  me  all  existences,  as  well  as  all 


1 1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lectures  2  and  3. 

*  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lectures  on  the  Scotch  School. 

*  See  on  Kant  and  the  Critique  of  Pure  Season,  vol.  v.  of  the  1st  Series, 
where  that  great  work  is  examined  with  as  much  extent  as  that  of  Eeid  in 
vol.  iv.,  and  the  Essay  of  Locke  in  vol.  iii.  of  the  2d  Series. 

4  On  Fichte,  2d  Series,  vol.  i.,  lecture  12;  3d  Series,  vol.  iv.,  Introduction 
aux  (Euvres  de  M.  de  Biran,  p.  324 


PHILOSOPHY    IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.  31 

sciences — sad  shipwreck  of  analysis,  which  signalizes  at  once  its 
greatest  effort  and  its  rock  ! 

The  same  spirit,  therefore,  governs  all  the  schools  of  the 
eighteenth  century ;  this  century  disdains  arbitrary  formulas ;  it 
has  a  horror  for  hypotheses,  and  attaches  itself,  or  pretends  to 
attach  itself,  to  the  observation  of  facts,  and  particularly  to  the 
analysis  of  thought. 

Let  us  acknowledge  with  freedom  and  with  grief,  that  the 
eighteenth  century  applied  analysis  to  all  things  without  pity 
and  without  measure.  It  cited  before  its  tribunal  all  doctrines, 
all  sciences ;  neither  the  metaphysics  of  the  preceding  age,  with 
their  imposing  systems,  nor  the  arts  with  their  prestige,  nor  the 
governments  with  their  ancient  authority,  nor  the  religions  with 
their  majesty, — nothing  found  favor  before  it.  Although  it  spied 
abysses  at  the  bottom  of  what  it  called  philosophy,  it  threw  itself 
into  them  with  a  courage  which  is  not  without  grandeur ;  for 
the  grandeur  of  man  is  to  prefer  what  he  believes  to  be  truth  to 
himself.  The  eighteenth  century  let  loose  tempests.  Humanity 
no  more  progressed,  except  over  ruins.  The  world  was  again 
agitated  in  that  state  of  disorder  in  which  it  had  already  been 
once  seen,  at  the  decline  of  the  ancient  beliefs,  and  before  the 
triumphs  of  Christianity,  when  men  wandered  through  all  con- 
traries, without  power  to  rest  anywhere,  given  up  to  every  dis- 
quietude of  spirit,  to  every  misery  of  heart,  fanaticat  and  atheisti- 
cal, mystical  and  incredulous,  voluptuous  and  sanguinary.1  But 
if  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  has  left  us  a  vacuity 
for  an  inheritance,  it  has  also  left  us  an  energetic  and  fecund  love 
of  truth.  The  eighteenth  century  was  the  age  of  criticism  and 
destructions ;  the  nineteenth  should  be  that  of  intelligent  rehabil- 
itations. It  belongs  to  it  to  find  in  a  profounder  analysis  of 


1  We  expressed  ourselves  thus  in  December,  1817,  when,  following  the 
great  wars  of  the  Revolution,  and  after  the  downfall  of  the  empire,  the  con- 
stitutional isonarchy,  still  poorly  established,  left  the  future  of  France  and 
of  the  world  obscure.  It  is  sad  to  be  obliged  to  hold  the  same  language  in 
1835,  over  the  ruins  accumulated  around  us. 


32  OPENESTG    DISCOURSE. 

thought  the  principles  of  the  future,  and  with  so  many  remains 
to  raise,  in  fine,  an  edifice  that  reason  may  be  able  to  acknowl- 
edge. 

A  feeble  but  zealous  workman,  I  come  to  bring  my  stone ;  I 
come  to  do  my  work ;  I  come  to  extract  from  the  midst  of  the 
ruins  what  has  not  perished,  what  cannot  perish.  This  course  is 
at  once  a  return  to  the  past,  an  effort  towards  the  future.  I  pro- 
pose neither  to  attack  nor  to  defend  any  of  the  three  great  schools 
that  divide  the  eighteenth  century.  I  will  not  attempt  to  per- 
petuate and  envenom  the  warfare  which  divides  them,  compla- 
cently designating  the  differences  which  separate  them,  without 
taking  an  account  of  the  community  of  method  which  unites 
them.  I  come,  on  the  contrary,  a  devoted  soldier  of  philosophy, 
a  common  friend  of  all  the  schools  which  it  has  produced,  to 
offer  to  all  the  words  of  peace. 

The  unity  of  modern  philosophy,  as  we  have  said,  resides  in 
its  method,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  analysis  of  thought — a  method 
superior  to  its  own  results,  for  it  contains  in  itself  the  means  of 
repairing  the  errors  that  escape  it,  of  indefinitely  adding  new 
riches  to  riches  already  acquired.  The  physical  sciences  them- 
selves have  no  other  unity.  The  great  physicians  who  have  ap- 
peared within  two  centuries,  although  united  amongst  themselves 
by  the  same  point  of  departure  and  by  the  same  end,  generally 
accepted,  have  nevertheless  proceeded  with  independence  and  in 
ways  often  opposite.  Time  has  re-collected  in  their  different 
theories  the  part  of  truth  that  produced  them  and  sustained  them  ; 
it  has  neglected  their  errors  from  which  they  were  unable  to  ex- 
tricate themselves,  and  uniting  all  the  discoveries  worthy  of  the 
name,  it  has  little  by  little  formed  of  them  a  vast  and  harmoni- 
ous whole.  Modern  philosophy  has  also  been  enriched  during 
the  two  centuries  with  a  multitude  of  exact  observations,  of  solid 
and  profound  theories,  for  which  it  is  indebted  to  the  common 
method.  What  has  hindered  her  from  progressing  at  an  equal 
pace  with  the  physical  sciences  whose  sister  she  is  ?  She  has 
been  hindered  by  not  understanding  better  her  own  interests,  by 


PHILOSOPHY   IN    THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY.  33 

not  tolerating  diversities  that  are  inevitable,  that  are  even  useful, 
and  by  not  profiting  by  the  truths  which  all  the  particular  doc- 
trines contain,  in  order  to  deduce  from  them  a  general  doctrine, 
which  is  successively  and  perpetually  purified  and  aggrandized. 

Not,  indeed,  that  I  would  recommend  that  blind  syncretism 
which  destroyed  the  school  of  Alexandria,  which  attempted  to 
bring  contrary  systems  together  by  force  ;  what  I  recommend  is 
an  enlightened  eclecticism,  which,  judging  with  equity,  and  even 
with  benevolence,  all  schools,  borrows  from  them  what  they  pos- 
sess of  the  true,  and  neglects  what  in  them  is  false.  Since  the 
spirit  of  party  has  hitherto  succeeded  so  ill  with  us,  let  us  try  the 
spirit  of  conciliation.  Human  thought  is  immense.  Each  school 
has  looked  at  it  only  from  its  own  point  of  view.  This  point  of 
view  is  not  false,  but  it  is  incomplete,  and  moreover,  it  is  exclu- 
sive. It  expresses  but  one  side  of  truth,  and  rejects  all  the  others. 
The  question  is  not  to  decry  and  recommence  the  work  of  our 
predecessors,  but  to  perfect  it  in  reuniting,  and  in  fortifying  by 
that  reunion,  all  the  truths  scattered  in  the  different  systems- 
which  the  eighteenth  century  has  transmitted  to  us. 

Such  is  the  principle  to  which  we  have  been  conducted  by  two 
years  of  study  upon  modern  philosophy,  from  Descartes  to  our 
times.  This  principle,  badly  disengaged  at  first,  we  applied  for 
the  first  time  within  the  narrowest  limits,  and  only  to  theories 
relative  to  the  question  of  personal  existence.1  We  then  extended 
it  to  a  greater  number  of  questions  and  theories ;  we  touched 
the  principal  points  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  order,4  and  at 
the  same  time  that  we  were  continuing  the  investigations  of  our 
illustrious  predecessor,  M.  Royer-Collard,  upon  the  schools  of 
France,  England,  and  Scotland,  we  commenced  the  study  new 
among  us,  the  difficult  but  interesting  and  fecund  study,  of  the 
philosophy  of  Koenigsberg.  We  can  at  the  present  time,  there- 
fore, embrace  all  the  schools  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  all 
the  problems  which  they  agitated. 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  i.,  Course  of  1816. 
*  Ibid.,  Course  of  1817. 

2* 


34:  OPENING   DISCOUKSE. 

Philosophy,  in  all  times,  turns  'upon  the  fundamental  ideas  of 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  The  idea  of  the  true,  phi- 
losophically developed,  is  psychology,  logic,  metaphysic ;  the 
idea  of  the  good  is  private  and  public  morals ;  the  idea  of  the 
beautiful  is  that  science  which,  in  Germany,  is  called  aesthetics,  the 
details  of  which  pertain  to  the  criticism  of  literature,  the  criticism 
of  arts,  but  whose  general  principles  have  always  occupied  a  more 
or  less  considerable  place  in  the  researches,  and  even  in  the  teach- 
ing of  philosophers,  from  Plato  and  Aristotle  to  Hutcheson  and 
Kant. 

Upon  these  essential  points  which  constitute  the  entire  domain 
of  philosophy,  we  will  successively  interrogate  the  principal  schools 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

When  we  examine  them  all  with  attention,  we  can  easily  re- 
duce them  to  two, — one  of  which,  in  the  analysis  of  thought,  the 
common  subject  of  all  their  works,  gives  to  sensation  an  excessive 
part ;  the  other  of  which,  in  this  same  analysis,  going  to  the  op- 
posite extreme,  deduces  consciousness  almost  wholly  from  a  fac- 
ulty different  from  that  of  sensation — reason.  The  first  of  these 
schools  is  the  empirical  school,  of  which  the  father,  or  rather  the 
wisest  representative,  is  Locke,  and  Condillac  the  extreme  repre- 
sentative ;  the  second  is  the  spiritualistic  or  rationalistic  school, 
as  it  is  called,  which  reckons  among  its  illustrious  interpreters 
Reid,  who  is  the  most  irreproachable,  and  Kant,  who  is  the  most 
systematic.  Surely  there  is  truth  in  these  two  schools,  and  truth 
is  a  good  which  must  be  taken  wherever  one  finds  it.  We  *vill- 
ingly  admit,  with  the  empirical  school,  that  the  senses  have  not 
been  given  us  in  vain ;  that  this  admirable  organization  which 
elevates  us  above  all  other  animate  beings,  is  a  rich  and  varied 
instrument,  which  it  would  be  folly  to  neglect.  We  are  con- 
vinced that  the  spectacle  of  the  world  is  a  permanent  source  of 
sound  and  sublime  instruction.  Upon  this  point  neither  Aris- 
totle, nor  Bacon,  nor  Locke,  has  in  us  an  adversary,  but  a  disciple. 
We  acknowledge,  or  rather  we  proclaim,  that  in  the  analysis  of 
human  knowledge,  it  is  necessary  to  assign  to  the  senses  an  im- 


PHILOSOPHY   IN   THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY.  35 

portant  part.  But  when  the  empirical  school  pretends  that  all 
that  passes  beyond  the  reach  of  the  senses  is  a  chimera,  then  we 
abandon  it,  and  go  over  to  the  opposite  school.  We  profess  to 
believe,  for  example,  that,  without  an  agreeable  impression,  never 
should  we  have  conceived  the  beautiful,  and  that,  notwithstand- 
ing, the  beautiful  is  not  merely  the  agreeable ;  that,  thank  heaven, 
happiness  is  usually  added  to  virtue,  but  that  the  idea  itself  of 
virtue  is  essentially  different  from  that  of  happiness.  On  this 
point  we  are  openly  of  the  opinion  of  Reid  and  Kant.  We  have 
also  established,  and  will  again  establish,  that  the  reason  of  man 
is  in  possession  of  principles  which  sensation  precedes  but  does 
not  explain,  and  which  are  directly  suggested  to  us  by  the  power 
of  reason  alone.  We  will  follow  Kant  thus  far,  but  not  farther. 
Far  from  following  him,  we  will  combat  him,  when,  after  having 
victoriously  defended  the  great  principles  of  every  kind  against 
empiricism,  he  strikes  them  with  sterility,  in  pretending  that  they 
have  no  value  beyond  the  inclosure  of  the  reason  which  possesses 
them,  condemning  also  to  impotence  that  same  reason  which  he 
has  just  elevated  so  high,  and  opening  the  way  to  a  refined  and 
learned  skepticism  which,  after  all,  ends  at  the  same  abyss  with 
ordinary  skepticism. 

You  perceive  that  we  shall  be  by  turns  with  Locke,  with  Reid, 
and  with  Kant,  in  that  just  and  strong  measure  which  is  called 
eclecticism. 

Eclecticism  is  in  our  eyes  the  true  historical  method,  and 
it  has  for  us  all  the  importance  of  the  history  of  philosophy ; 
but  there  is  something  which  we  place  above  the  history  of 
philosophy,  and,  consequently,  above  eclecticism, — philosophy 
itself. 

The  history  of  philosophy  does  not  carry  its  own  light  with  it, 
it  is  not  its  own  end.  How  could  eclecticism,  which  has  no  other 
field  than  history,  be  our  only,  our  primary,  object  ? 

It  is,  doubtless,  just,  it  is  of  the  highest  utility,  to  discriminate 
in  each  system  what  there  is  true  in  it  from  what  there  is  false 
in  it ;  first,  in  order  to  appreciate  this  system  rightly ;  then,  in 


36  OPENING    DISCOURSE. 

order  to  render  the  false  of  no  account,  to  disengage  and  re-collect 
the  true,  and  thus  to  enrich  and  aggrandize  philosophy  by  history. 
But  you  conceive  that  we  must  already  know  what  truth  is,  in 
order  to  recognize  it,  and  to  distinguish  it  from  the  error  with 
which  it  is  mixed ;  so  that  the  criticism  of  systems  almost  de- 
mands a  system,  so  that  the  history  of  philosophy  is  constrained 
to  first  borrow  from  philosophy  the  light  which  it  must  one  day 
return  to  it  with  usury. 

In  fine,  the  history  of  philosophy  is  only  a  branch,  or  rather  an 
instrument,  of  philosophical  science.  Surely  it  is  the  interest 
which  we  feel  for  philosophy  that  alone  attaches  us  to  its  history ; 
it  is  the  love  of  truth  which  makes  us  everywhere  pursue  its  ves- 
tiges, and  interrogate  with  a  passionate  curiosity  those  who  before 
us  have  also  loved  and  sought  truth. 

Thus  philosophy  is  at  once  the  supreme  object  and  the  torch 
of  the  history  of  philosophy.  By  this  double  title  it  has  a  right 
to  preside  over  our  instruction. 

In  regard  to  this,  one  word  of  explanation,  I  beg  you. 

He  who  is  speaking  before  you  to-day  is,  it  is  true,  officially 
charged  only  with  the  course  of  the  history  of  philosophy ;  in  that 
is  our  task,  and  in  that,  once  more,  our  guide  shall  be  eclecticism.1 
But,  we  confess,  if  philosophy  has  not  the  right  to  present  itself 
here  in  some  sort  on  the  first  plan ;  if  it  should  appear  only 
behind  its  history,  it  in  reality  holds  dominion ;  and  to  it  all  our 
wishes,  as  well  as  all  our  efforts,  are  related.  We  hold,  doubtless,  in 
great  esteem,  both  Brucker  and  Tennemann,2  so  wise,  so  judicious ; 
nevertheless  our  models,  our  veritable  masters,  always  present  to 
our  thought,  are,  in  antiquity,  Plato  and  Socrates,  among  the 
moderns,  Descartes,  and,  why  should  I  hesitate  to  say  it,  among 


1  On  the  legitimate  employment  and  the  imperative  conditions  of  eclecticism, 
see  3d  Series,  Fragments  Philosophiques,  vol.  iv.,  preface  of  the  first  edition, 
p.  41,  &c.,  especially  the  article  entitled  De  la  Philosophic  en  Belgique,  pp. 
228  and  229. 

s  We  have  translated  his  excellent  Manual  of  the  History  of  Philosophy. 
See  the  second  edition,  vol.  ii.,  8vo.,  1839. 


PHILOSOPHY   IN   THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY.  37 

us,  and  in  our  times,  the  illustrious  man  who  has  been  pleased  to 
call  us  to  this  chair.  M.  Royer-Collard  was  also  only  a  professor 
of  the  history  of  philosophy ;  but  he  rightly  pretended  to  have 
an  opinion  in  philosophy ;  he  served  a  cause  which  he  has  trans- 
mitted to  us,  and  we  will  serve  it  in  our  turn. 

This  great  cause  is  known  to  you ;  it  is  that  of  a  sound  and 
generous  philosophy,  worthy  of  our  century  by  the  severity  of  its 
methods,  and  answering  to  the  immortal  wants  of  humanity, 
setting  out  modestly  from  psychology,  from  the  humble  study  of 
the  human  mind,  in  order  to  elevate  itself  to  the  highest  regions, 
and  to  traverse  metaphysics,  aesthetics,  theodicea,  morals,  and 
politics. 

Our  enterprise  is  not  then  simply  to  renew  the  history  of 
philosophy  by  eclecticism ;  we  also  wish,  we  especially  wish, 
and  history  well  understood,  thanks  to  eclecticism,  will  therein 
powerfully  assist  us,  to  deduce  from  the  study  of  systems, 
their  strifes,  and  even  their  ruins,  a  system  which  may  be 
proof  against  criticism,  and  which  can  be  accepted  by  your 
reason,  and  also  by  your  heart,  noble  youth  of  the  nineteenth 
century ! 

In  order  to  fulfil  this  great  object,  which  is  our  veritable  mission 
to  you,  we  shall  dare  this  year,  for  the  first  and  for  the  last  time, 
to  go  beyond  the  narrow  limits  which  are  imposed  upon  us.  In 
the  history  of  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  have 
resolved  to  leave  a  little  in  the  shade  the  history  of  philosophy, 
in  order  to  make  philosophy  itself  appear,  and  while  exhibiting 
to  you  the  distinctive  traits  of  the  principal  doctrines  of  the  last 
century,  to  expose  to  you  the  doctrine  which  seems  to  us  adapted 
to  the  wants  and  to  the  spirit  of  our  times,  and  still,  to  explain  it 
to  you  briefly,  but  in  its  full  extent,  instead  of  dwelling  upon  some 
one  of  its  parts,  as  hitherto  we  have  done.  With  years  we  will  cor- 
rect, we  will  task  ourselves  to  aggrandize  and  elevate  our  work. 
To-day  we  present  it  you  very  imperfect  still,  but  established  upon 
foundations  which  we  believe  solid,  and  already  stamped  with  a 
character  that  will  not  change. 


38  OPENING   DISCOURSE. 

You  will  here  see,  then,  brought  together  in  a  short  space,  oui 
principles,  our  processes,  our  results.  We  ardently  desire  to 
recommend  them  to  you,  young  men,  who  are  the  hope  of 
science  as  well  as  of  your  country.  May  we  at  least  be  able,  in 
the  vast  career  which  we  have  to  run,  to  meet  in  you  the  same 
kindness  which  hitherto  has  sustained  us. 


PART    FIRST. 


THE  TRUE. 


LECTURE    I. 

THE  EXISTENCE  OF  UNIVEESAL  AND  NECESSARY  PRINCIPLES. 

Two  great  wants,  that  of  absolute  truths,  and  that  of  absolute  truths  that 
may  not  be  chimeras.  To  satisfy  these  two  wants  is  the  problem  of  the 
philosophy  of  our  time. — Universal  and  necessary  principles. — Examples 
of  different  kinds  of  such  principles. — Distinction  between  universal  and 
necessary  principles  and  general  principles. — Experience  alone  is  inca- 
pable of  explaining  universal  and  necessary  principles,  and  also  incapable 
of  dispensing  with  them  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  the  sensible 
world. — Keasou  as  being  that  faculty  of  ours  which  discovers  to  us  these 
principles. — The  study  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  introduces 
us  to  the  highest  parts  of  philosophy. 

TO-DAY,  as  in  all  time,  two  great  wants  are  felt  by  man.  The 
first,  the  most  imperious,  is  that  of  fixed,  immutable  principles, 
which  depend  upon  neither  times  nor  places  nor  circumstances, 
and  on  which  the  mind  reposes  with  an  unbounded  confidence.  In 
all  investigations,  as  long  as  we  have  seized  only  isolated,  discon- 
nected facts,  as  long  as  we  have  not  referred  them  to  a  general 
law,  we  possess  the  materials  of  science,  but  there  is  yet  no  science. 
Even  physics  commence  only  when  universal  truths  appear,  to 
which  all  the  facts  of  the  same  order  that  observation  discovers  to 
us  in  nature  may  be  referred.  Plato  has  said,  that  there  is  no 
science  of  the  transitory. 

This  is  our  first  need.  But  there  is  another,  not  less  legitimate, 
the  need  of  not  being  the  dupe  of  chimerical  principles,  of  barren 
abstractions,  of  combinations  more  or  less  ingenious,  but  artificial, 


40  LECTURE   FIRST. 

the  need  of  resting  upon  reality  and  life,  the  need  of  experience 
The  physical  and  natural  sciences,  whose  regular  and  rapid  con- 
quests strike  and  dazzle  the  most  ignorant,  owe  their  progress  to 
the  experimental  method.  Hence  the  immense  popularity  of  this 
method,  which  is  carried  to  such  an  extent  that  one  would  not  now 
condescend  to  lend  the  least  attention  to  a  science  over  which  this 
method  should  not  seem  to  preside. 

To  unite  observation  and  reason,  not  to  lose  sight  of  the  ideal 
of  science  to  which  man  aspires,  and  to  search  for  it  and  find  it 
by  the  route  of  experience, — such  is  the  problem  of  philosophy. 

Now  we  address  ourselves  to  your  recollections  of  the  last  two 
years : — have  we  not  established,  by  the  severest  experimental 
method,  by  reflection  applied  to  the  study  of  the  human  mind,  with 
the  deliberation  and  the  rigor  which  such  demonstrations  exact, 
— have  we  not  established  that  there  are  in  all  men,  without  dis- 
tinction, in  the  wise  and  the  ignorant,  ideas,  notions,  beliefs,  prin- 
ciples which  the  most  determined  skeptic  cannot  in  the  slightest 
degree  deny,  by  which  he  is  unconsciously,  and  in  spite  of  himself, 
governed  both  in  his  words  and  actions,  and  which,  by  a  striking 
contrast  with  our  other  knowledges,  are  marked  with  the  at  once 
marvellous  and  incontestable  character,  that  they  are  encountered 
in  the  most  common  experience,  and  that,  at  the  same  time,  instead 
of  being  circumscribed  within  the  limits  of  this  experience,  they 
surpass  and  govern  it,  universal  in  the  midst  of  particular  phe- 
nomena to  which  they  are  applied ;  necessary,  although  mingled 
with  things  contingent ;  to  our  eyes  infinite  and  absolute,  even 
while  appearing  within  us  in  that  relative  and  finite  being  which 
we  are  ?  It  is  not  an  unpremeditated  paradox  that  we  present  to 
you  ;  we  are  only  expressing  here  the  result  of  numerous  lectures.1 

It  was  not  difficult  for  us  to  show  that  there  are  universal  and 
necessary  principles  at  the  head  of  all  sciences. 

It  is  very  evident  that  there  are  no  mathematics  without  axioms 
and  definitions,  that  is  to  say,  without  absolute  principles. 

1 1st  Series  of  our  Course,  vol.  i. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF   PRINCIPLES.  41 

What  would  logic  become,  those  mathematics  of  thought,  if 
you  should  take  away  from  it  a  certain  number  of  principles, 
which  are  a  little  barbarous,  perhaps,  in  their  scholastic  form,  but 
must  be  universal  and  necessary  in  order  to  preside  over  all  rea- 
soning and  every  demonstration  ? 

Are  physics  possible,  if  every  phenomenon  which  begins  to 
appear  does  not  suppose  a  cause  and  a  law  ? 

Without  the  principle  of  final  causes,  could  physiology  proceed 
a  single  step,  render  to  itself  an  account  of  a  single  organ,  or 
determine  a  single  function  ? 

Is  not  the  principle  on  which  the  whole  of  morals  rests,  the 
principle  which  obligates  man  to  good  and  lays  the  foundation 
of  virtue,  of  the  same  nature  ?  Does  it  not  extend  to  all  moral 
beings,  without  distinction  of  time  and  place  ?  Can  you  conceive 
of  a  moral  being  who  does  not  recognize  in  the  depth  of  his  con- 
science that  reason  ought  to  govern  passion,  that  it  is  necessary  to 
preserve  sworn  faith,  and,  against  the  most  pressing  interest,  to 
restore  the  treasure  that  has  been  confided  to  us  ? 

And  these  are  not  mere  metaphysical  prejudices  and  formulas 
of  the  schools :  I  appeal  to  the  most  vulgar  common  sense. 

If  I  should  say  to  you  that  a  murder  has  just  been  committed, 
could  you  not  ask  me  when,  where,  by  whom,  wherefore  ?  That 
is  to  say,  your  mind  is  directed  by  the  universal  and  necessary 
principles  of  time,  of  space,  of  cause,  and  even  of  final  cause. 

If  I  should  say  to  you  that  love  or  ambition  caused  the  mur- 
der, would  you  not  at  the  same  instant  conceive  a  lover,  an  am- 
bitious person  ?  This  means,  again,  that  there  is  for  you  no  act 
without  an  agent,  no  quality  and  phenomenon  without  a  substance, 
without  a  real  subject. 

If  I  should  say  to  you  that  the  accused  pretends  that  he  is  not 
the  same  person  who  conceived,  willed,  and  executed  this  murder, 
and  that,  at  intervals,  his  personality  has  more  than  once  been 
changed,  would  you  not  say  he  is  a  fool  if  he  is  sincere,  and  that, 
although  the  acts  and  the  incidents  have  varied,  the  person  and 
the  being  have  remained  the  same  ? 


42  LECTURE  FIRST. 

Suppose  that  the  accused  should  defend  himself  on  this  ground, 
that  the  murder  must  serve  his  interest ;  that,  moreover,  the  per- 
son killed  was  so  unhappy  that  life  was  a  burden  to  him  ;  that 
the  state  loses  nothing,  since  in  place  of  two  worthless  citizens  it 
acquires  one  who  becomes  useful  to  it ;  that,  in  fine,  mankind  will 
not  perish  by  the  loss  of  an  individual,  &c. ;  to  all  these  reason- 
ings would  you  not  oppose  the  very  simple  response,  that  this 
murder,  useful  perhaps  to  its  author,  is  not  the  less  unjust,  and 
that,  therefore,  under  no  pretext  was  it  permitted  ? 

The  same  good  sense  which  admits  universal  and  necessary 
truths,  easily  distinguishes  them  from  those  that  are  not  universal 
and  necessary,  and  are  only  general,  that  is  to  say,  are  applied 
only  to  a  greater  or  less  number  of  cases. 

For  example,  the  following  is  a  very  general  truth :  the  day 
succeeds  the  night ;  but  is  it  a  universal  and  necessary  truth  ? 
Does  it  extend  to  all  lands  ?  Yes,  to  all  known  lands.  But  does 
it  extend  to  all  possible  lands  ?  No ;  for  it  is  possible  to  con- 
ceive of  lands  plunged  in  eternal  night,  another  system  of  the 
world  being  given.  The  laws  of  the  material  world  are  what 
they  are ;  they  are  not  necessary.  Their  Author  might  have 
chosen  others.  With  another  system  of  the  world  one  conceives 
other  physics,  but  we  cannot  conceive  other  mathematics  and 
other  morals.  Thus  it  is  possible  to  conceive  that  day  and  night 
may  not  be  in  the  same  relation  to  each  as  that  in  which  we  see 
them ;  therefore  the  truth  that  day  succeeds  night  is  a  very 
general  truth,  perhaps  even  a  universal  truth,  but  by  no  means  a 
necessary  truth. 

Montesquieu  has  said  that  liberty  is  not  a  fruit  of  warm  cli- 
mates. I  acknowledge,  if  it  is  desired,  that  heat  enervates  the 
spirit,  and  that  warm  countries  maintain  free  governments  with 
difficulty ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  there  may  be  no  possible 
exception  to  this  principle :  moreover,  there  have  been  excep- 
tions ;  hence  it  is  not  an  absolutely  universal  principle,  much  less 
is  it  a  necessary  principle.  Could  you  say  as  much  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  cause?  Could  you  in  any  way  conceive,  in  any  time 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  43 

and  in  any  place,  a  phenomenon  which  begins  to  appear  without 
a  cause,  physical  or  moral  ? 

And  were  it  possible  to  reduce  universal  and  necessary  princi- 
ples to  general  principles,  in  order  to  employ  and  apply  these 
principles  thus  abased,  and  to  found  upon  them  any  reasoning 
whatever,  it  would  be  necessary  to  admit  what  is  called  in  logic 
the  principle  of  contradiction,  viz.,  that  a  thing  cannot  at  the 
same  time  be  and  not  be,  in  order  to  maintain  the  integrity  of 
each  part  of  the  reasoning ;  as  well  as  the  principle  of  sufficient 
reason,  which  alone  establishes  their  connection  and  the  legiti- 
macy of  the  conclusion.  Now,  these  two  principles,  without 
which  there  is  no  reasoning,  are  themselves  universal  and  neces- 
sary principles ;  so  that  the  circle  is  manifest. 

Even  were  we  to  destroy  in  thought  all  existences,  save  that  of 
a  single  mind,  we  should  be  compelled  to  place  in  that  mind,  in 
order  that  it  might  exercise  itself  at  all — and  the  mind  is  such 
only  on  the  condition  that  it  thinks — several  necessary  principles ; 
it  would  be  beyond  the  power  of  thought  to  conceive  it  deprived 
of  the  principle  of  contradiction  and  the  principle  of  sufficient 
reason. 

How  many  times  have  we  demonstrated  the  vanity  of  the 
efforts  of  the  empirical  school  to  disturb  the  existence  or  weaken 
the  bearing  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  !  Listen  to  this 
school :  it  will  say  to  you  that  the  principle  of  cause,  given  by 
us  as  universal  and  necessary,  is,  after  all,  only  a  habit  of  the 
mind,  which,  seeing  in  nature  a  fact  succeeding  another  fact,  puts 
between  these  that  connection  which  we  have  called  the  relation 
of  effect  to  cause.  This  explanation  is  nothing  but  the  destruc- 
tion, not  only  of  the  principle  of  causality,  but  even  of  the  notion 
of  cause.  The  senses  show  me  two  balls,  one  of  which  begins  to 
move,  the  other  of  which  moves  after  it.  Suppose  that  this  suc- 
cession is  renewed  and  continues ;  it  will  be  constancy  added  to 
succession ;  it  will  by  no  means  be  the  connection  of  a  causative 
power  with  its  effect ;  for  example,  that  which  consciousness  at- 
tests to  us  is  the  least  effort  of  volition.  Thus  a  consequent  em- 


44  LECTURE   FIRST. 

pirist,  like  Hume,1  easily  proves  that  no  sensible  experience 
legitimately  gives  the  idea  of  cause. 

What  we  say  of  the  notion  of  cause  we  might  say  of  all  notions 
of  the  same  kind.  Let  us  at  least  instance  those  of  substance 
and  unity. 

The  senses  perceive  only  qualities,  phenomena.  I  touch  the 
extension,  I  see  the  color,  I  am  sensible  of  the  odor ;  but  do  our 
senses  attain  the  substance  that  is  extended,  colored,  or  odorous  ? 
On  this  point  Hume8  indulges  in  pleasantries.  He  asks  which 
one  of  our  senses  takes  cognizance  of  substance.  What,  then, 
according  to  him  and  in  the  system  of  empiricism,  is  the  notion 
of  substance  ?  An  illusion  like  the  notion  of  cause. 

Neither  do  the  senses  give  us  unity ;  for  unity  is  identity,  is 
simplicity,  and  the  senses  show  us  every  thing  in  succession  and 
composition.  The  works  of  art  possess  unity  only  because  Art, 
that  is  to  say,  the  mind  of  man  puts  it  there.  If  we  perceive 
unity  in  the  works  of  nature,  it  is  not  the  senses  that  discover  it 
to  us.  The  arrangement  of  the  different  parts  of  an  object  may 
contain  unity,  but  it  is  a  unity  of  organization,  an  ideal  and 
moral  unity  which  the  mind  alone  conceives,  and  which  escapes 
the  senses. 

If  the  senses  are  not  able  to  explain  simple  notions,  much  less 
still  are  they  able  to  explain  the  principles  in  which  these  notions 
are  met,  which  are  universal  and  necessary.  In  fact,  the  senses 
clearly  perceive  such  and  such  facts,  but  it  is  impossible  for  them 
to  embrace  what  is  universal ;  experience  attests  what  is,  it  does 
not  reach  what  cannot  but  be. 

We  go  farther.  Not  only  is  empiricism  unable  to  explain  uni- 
versal and  necessary  principles ;  but  we  maintain  that,  without 
these  principles,  empiricism  cannot  even  account  for  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  sensible  world. 

Take  away  the  principle  of  causality,  and  the  human  mind  is 
condemned  never  to  go  out  of  itself  and  its  own  modifications. 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  i.  *  Ibid. 


THE   EXISTENCE    OF   PRINCIPLES.  45 

All  the  sensations  of  hearing,  of  smell,  of  taste,  of  touch,  of  feel- 
ing even,  cannot  inform  you  what  their  cause  is,  nor  whether 
they  have  a  cause.  But  give  to  the  human  mind  the  principle 
of  causality,  admit  that  every  sensation,  as  well  as  every  phenom- 
enon, every  change,  every  event,  has  a  cause,  as  evidently  we  are 
not  the  cause  of  certain  sensations,  and  that  especially  these  sen- 
sations must  have  a  cause,  and  we  are  naturally  led  to  recognize 
for  those  sensations  causes  different  from  ourselves,  and  that  is 
the  first  notion  of  an  exterior  world.  The  universal  and  neces- 
sary principle  of  causality  alone  gives  it  and  justifies  it.  Other 
principles  of  the  same  order  increase  and  develop  it. 

As  soon  as  you  know  that  there  are  external  objects,  I  ask  you 
whether  you  do  not  conceive  them  in  a  place  that  contains  them. 
In  order  to  deny  it,  it  would  be  necessary  to  deny  that  every  body 
is  in  a  place,  that  is  to  say,  to  reject  a  truth  of  physics,  which  is 
at  the  same  time  a  principle  of  metaphysics,  as  well  as  an  axiom 
of  common  sense.  But  the  place  that  contains  a  body  is  often 
itself  a  body,  which  is  only  more  capacious  than  the  first.  This 
new  body  is  in  its  turn  in  a  place.  Is  this  new  place  also  a  body  ? 
Then  it  is  contained  in  another  place  more  extended,  and  so  on ; 
so  that  it  is  impossible  for  you  to  conceive  a  body  which  is  not 
in  a  place ;  and  you  arrive  at  the  conception  of  a  boundless  and 
infinite  place,  that  contains  all  limited  places  and  all  possible 
bodies  :  that  boundless  and  infinite  place  is  space. 

And  I  tell  you  in  this  nothing  that  is  not  very  simple.  Look. 
Do  you  deny  that  this  water  is  in  a  vase  ?  Do  you  deny  that  this 
vase  is  in  this  hall  ?  Do  you  deny  that  this  hall  is  in  a  larger 
place,  which  is  in  its  turn  in  another  larger  still  ?  I  can  thus  carry 
you  on  to  infinite  space.  If  you  deny  a  single  one  of  these  pro- 
positions, you  deny  all,  the  first  as  well  as  the  last ;  and  if  you 
admit  the  first,  you  are  forced  to  admit  the  last. 

It  cannot  be  supposed  that  sensibility,  which  is  not  able  to 
give  us  even  the  idea  of  body,  alone  elevates  us  to  the  idea  of 
space.  The  intervention  of  a  superior  principle  is,  therefore,  here 
necessary. 


46  LECTURE    FIRST. 

As  we  believe  that  every  body  is  contained  in  a  place,  so  we 
believe  that  every  event  happens  in  time.  Can  you  conceive  an 
event  happening,  except  in  some  point  of  duration  ?  This  dura- 
tion is  extended  and  successively  increased  to  your  mind's  eye, 
and  you  end  by  conceiving  it  unlimited  like  space.  Deny  dura- 
tion, and  you  deny  all  the  sciences  that  measure  it,  you  destroy 
all  the  natural  beliefs  upon  which  human  life  reposes.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  add  that  sensibility  alone  no  more  explains  the  notion 
of  time  than  that  of  space,  both  of  which  are  nevertheless  inhe- 
rent in  the  knowledge  of  the  external  world. 

Empiricism  is,  therefore,  convicted  of  being  unable  to  dispense 
with  universal  and  necessary  principles,  and  of  being  unable  to 
explain  them. 

Let  us  pause :  either  all  our  preceding  works  have  terminated 
in  nothing  but  chimeras,  or  they  permit  us  to  consider  as  a  point 
definitely  acquired  for  science,  that  there  are  in  the  human  mind, 
for  whomsoever  interrogates  it  sincerely,  principles  really  stamped 
with  the  character  of  universality  and  necessity. 

After  having  established  and  defended  the  existence  of  univer- 
sal and  necessary  principles,  we  might  investigate  and  pursue  this 
kind  of  principles  in  all  the  departments  of  human  knowledge, 
and  attempt  an  exact  and  rigorous  classification ;  but  illustrious 
examples  have  taught  us  to  fear  to  compromise  truths  of  the 
greatest  price  by  mixing  with  them  conjectures  which,  in  giving 
brilliancy,  perhaps,  to  the  spirit  of  philosophy,  diminish  its  author- 
ity in  the  eyes  of  the  wise.  We,  also,  following  the  example  of 
Kant,  attempted  before  you,  last  year,1  a  classification,  even  a  re- 
duction of  universal  and  necessary  principles,  and  of  all  the  notions 
that  are  connected  with  them.  This  work  has  not  lost  for  us  its 
importance,  but  we  will  not  reproduce  it.  In  the  interest  of  the 
great  cause  which  we  serve,  and  taking  thought  here  only  to  estab- 
lish upon  solid  foundations  the  doctrine  which  is  adapted  to  the 
French  genius  in  the  nineteenth  century,  we  will  carefully  shun 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  i.,  Fragments  of  the  Course  of  1817. 


THE   EXISTENCE    OF   PRINCIPLES.  47 

every  thing  that  might  seem  personal  and  hazardous  ;  and,  instead 
of  examining,  criticising,1  and  reconstituting  the  classification 
which  the  philosophy  of  Kcenigsberg  has  given  of  universal  and 
necessary  principles,  we  prefer,  we  find  it  much  more  useful,  to 
enable  you  to  penetrate  deeper  into  the  nature  of  these  principles, 
by  showing  you  what  faculty  of  ours  it  is  that  discovers  them  to 
us,  and  to  which  they  are  related  and  correspond. 

The  peculiarity  of  these  principles  is,  that  each  one  of  us  in 
reflection  recognizes  that  he  possesses  them,  but  that  he  is  not  their 
author.  We  conceive  them  and  apply  them,  we  do  not  constitute 
them.  Let  us  interrogate  our  consciousness.  Do  we  refer  to  our- 
selves, for  example,  the  definitions  of  geometry,  as  we  do  certain 
movements  of  which  we  feel  ourselves  to  be  the  cause  ?  If  it  is 
I  who  make  these  definitions,  they  are  therefore  mine,  I  can  un- 
make them,  modify  them,  change  them,  even  annihilate'  them. 
It  is  certain  that  I  cannot  do  it.  I  am  not,  then,  the  author  of 
them.  It  has  also  been  demonstrated  that  the  principles  of  which 
we  have  spoken  cannot  be  derived  from  sensation,  which  is  varia- 
ble, limited,  incapable  of  producing  and  authorizing  any  thing 
universal  and  necessary.  I  arrive,  then,  at  the  following  conse- 
quence, also  necessary : — truth  is  in  me  and  not  by  me.  As 
sensibility  puts  me  in  relation  with  the  physical  world,  so  another 
faculty  puts  me  in  communication  with  the  truths  that  depend 
upon  neither  the  world  nor  me,  and  that  faculty  is  reason. 

There  are  in  men  three  general  faculties  which  are  always 
mingled  together,  and  are  rarely  exercised  except  simultaneously, 
but  which  analysis  divides  in  order  to  study  them  better,  without 
misconceiving  their  reciprocal  play,  their  intimate  connection,  their 
indivisible  unity.  The  first  of  these  faculties  is  activity,  voluntary 
and  free  activity,  in  which  human  personality  especially  appears, 
and  -without  which  the  other  faculties  would  be  as  if  they  were 
not,  since  we  should  not  exist  for  ourselves.  Let  us  examine 
ourselves  at  the  moment  when  a  sensation  is  produced  in  us ;  we 


1  See  that  criticism,  1st  Series,  vol.  v.,  Kant,  lecture  8. 


48  LECTURE   FIRST. 

shall  recognize  that  there  is  perception  only  to  far  as  there  is  some 
degree  of  attention,  and  that  perception  ends  at  the  moment  when 
our  activity  ends.  One  does  not  recollect  what  he  did  in  perfect 
sleep  or  in  a  swoon ;  because  then  he  had  lost  voluntary  activity, 
consequently  consciousness ;  consequently,  again,  memory.  Pas- 
sion often,  in  depriving  us  of  liberty,  deprives  us,  at  the  same 
time,  of  the  consciousness  of  our  actions  and  of 'ourselves;  then, 
to  use  a  just  and  common  expression,  one  knows  not  what  he 
does.  It  is  by  liberty  that  man  is  truly  man,  that  he  possesses 
himself  and  governs  himself;  without  it,  he  falls  again  under  the 
yoke  of  nature ;  he  is,  without  it,  only  a  more  admirable  and 
more  beautiful  part  of  nature.  But  while  I  am  endowed  with 
activity  and  liberty,  I  am  also  passive  in  other  respects ;  I  am 
subject  to  the  laws  of  the  external  world ;  I  suffer  and  I  enjoy 
without  being  myself  the  author  of  my  joys  and  my  sufferings ; 
I  feel  rising  within  me  needs,  desires,  passions,  which  I  have 
not  made,  which  by  turns  fill  my  life  with  happiness  and 
misery.  Finally,  besides  volition  and  sensibility,  man  has  the 
faculty  of  knowing,  has  understanding,  intelligence,  reason,  the 
name  matters  little,  by  means  of  which  he  is  elevated  to  truths  of 
different  orders,  and  among  others,  to  universal  and  necessary 
truths,  which  suppose  in  reason,  attached  to  its  exercise,  princi- 
ples entirely  distinct  from  the  impressions  of  the  senses  and  the 
resolutions  of  the  will.1 

Voluntary  activity,  sensibility,  reason,  are  all  equally  certain. 
Consciousness  verifies  the  existence  of  necessary  principles,  which 
direct  the  reason  quite  as  well  as  that  of  sensations  and  volitions. 
I  call  every  thing  real  that  falls  under  observation.  I  suffer;  my 

1  This  classification  of  the  human  faculties,  save  some  differences  more 
nominal  than  real,  is  now  generally  adopted,  and  makes  the  foundation  of 
the  psychology  of  our  times.  See  our  writings,  among  others,  1st  Series, 
Course  of  1816,  lectures  23  and  24:  Histoire  du  moi  ;  ibid.,  Des  fails  de  Con- 
science ;  vol.  iii.,  lecture  3,  Examen  de  la  TMorie  des  Facult  's  dans  Condillac  ; 
vol.  iv.,  lecture  21,  d*s  Facultes  selon  Reid;  vol.  v.,  lecture  8,  Seamen  de  la 
Theorie  de  Kant ;  3d  Series,  vol  iv.,  Preface  de  la  Premiere  Edition,  Examen 
des  Lemons  de  M.  Laromiguiere,  Introduction  aux  (Euvres  deM.de  JSiran,  etc. 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  PRINCIPLES.  49 

suffering  is  real,  inasmuch  as  I  am  conscious  of  it :  it  is  the  same 
with  liberty  :  it  is  the  same  with  reason  and  the  principles  that 
govern  it.  We  can  affirm,  then,  that  the  existence  of  universal 
and  necessary  principles  rests  upon  the  testimony  of  observation, 
and  even  of  the  most  immediate  and  surest  observation,  that  of 
consciousness. 

But  consciousness  is  only  a  witness, — it  makes  what  is  appear ; 
it  creates  nothing.  It  is  not  because  consciousness  announces  it 
to  you,  that  you  have  produced  such  or  such  a  movement,  that  you 
have  experienced  such  or  such  an  impression.  Neither  is  it  because 
consciousness  says  to  us  that  reason  is  constrained  to  admit  such 
or  such  a  truth,  that  this  truth  exists ;  it  is  because  it  exists  that 
it  is  impossible  for  reason  not  to  admit  it.  The  truths  that  reason 
attains  by  the  aid  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  with  which 
it  is  provided,  are  absolute  truths  ;  reason  does  not  create  them, 
it  discovers  them.  Reason  is  not  the  judge  of  its  own  principles, 
and  cannot  account  for  them,  for  it  only  judges  by  them,  and 
they  are  to  it  its  own  laws.  Much  less  does  consciousness  make 
these  principles,  or  the  truths  which  they  reveal  to  us ;  for  con- 
sciousness has  no  other  office,  no  other  power  than  in  some  sort 
to  serve  as  a  mirror  for  reason.  Absolute  truths  are,  therefore, 
independent  of  experience  and  consciousness,  and  at  the  same 
time,  they  are  attested  by  experience  and  consciousness.  On  the 
one  hand,  these  truths  declare  themselves  in  experience ;  on  the 
other,  no  experience  explains  them.  Behold  how  experience  and 
reason  differ  and  agree,  and  how,  by  means  of-  experience,  we 
come  to  find  something  which  surpasses  it. 

So  the  philosophy  which  we  teach  rests  neither  upon  hypo- 
thetical principles,  nor  upon  empirical  principles.  It  is  observation 
itself,  but  observation  applied  to  the  higher  portion  of  our  knowl- 
edge, which  furnishes  us  with  the  principles  that  we  seek,  with  a 
point  of  departure  at  once  solid  and  elevated.1 


1  This  lecture  on  the  existence  of  universal  and  necessary  principles,  which 
was  easily  comprehended,  in  1818,  by  an  auditory  to  which  long  discussions 

3 


50  LECTURE  FIKST. 

This  point  of  departure  we  have  found,  and  we  do  not  abandon 
it.  We  remain  immovably  attached  to  it.  The  study  of  uni 
versal  and  necessary  principles,  considered  under  their  different 
aspects,  and  in  the  great  problems  which  they  solve,  is  almost 
the  whole  of  philosophy ;  it  fills  it,  measures  it,  divides  it.  If 
psychology  is  the  regular  study  of  the  human  mind  and  its  laws, 
it  is  evident  that  that  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  which 
preside  over  the  exercise  of  reason,  is  the  especial  domain  of  psy- 
chology, which  in  Germany  is  called  rational  psychology,  and  is 
very  different  from  empirical  psychology.  Since  logic  is  the 
examination  of  the  value  and  the  legitimacy  of  our  different  means 
of  knowing,  its  most  important  employment  must  be  to  estimate 
the  value  and  the  legitimacy  of  the  principles  which  are  the  foun- 
dations of  our  most  important  cognitions.  In  fine,  the  meditation 
of  these  same  principles  conducts  us  to  theodicea,  and  opens  to 
us  the  sanctuary  of  philosophy,  if  we  wo^ld  ascend  to  their  true 
source,  to  that  sovereign  reason  which  is  the  first  and  last  expla- 
nation of  our  own. 


had  already  been  presented  during  the  two  previous  years,  appearing  here 
without  the  support  of  these  preliminaries,  will  not  perhaps  be  entirely  satis- 
factory to  the  reader.  We  beseech  him  to  consult  carefully  the  first  volume 
of  the  1st  Series  of  our  Course,  which  contains  an  abridgment,  at  least,  of 
the  numerous  lectures  of  1816  and  1817,  of  which  this  is  a  resume;  especially 
to  read  in  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  volumes  of  the  1st  Series,  the  developed 
analyses,  in  which,  under  different  forms,  universal  and  necessary  principles 
are  demonstrated  as  far  as  may  be,  and  in  the  third  volume  of  the  2d  Series, 
the  lectures  devoted  to  establish  against  Locke  the  same  principles. 


LECTUEE  II. 

ORIGIN  OF   UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY    PRINCIPLES. 

Resume  of  the  preceding  Lecture.  A  new  question,  that  of  the  origin  of 
universal  and  necessary  principles. — Danger  of  this  question,  and  its  ne- 
cessity.— Different  forms  under  which  truth  presents  itself  to  us,  and  the 
successive  order  of  these  forms :  theory  of  spontaneity  and  reflection. — 
The  primitive  form  of  principles ;  abstraction  that  disengages  them  from 
that  form,  and  gives  them  their  actual  form. — Examination  and  refutation 
of  the  theory  that  attempts  to  explain  the  origin  of  principles  by  an  induc- 
tion founded  on  particular  notions. 

WE  may  regard  as  a  certain  conquest  of  the  experimental 
method  and  of  true  psychological  analysis,  the  establishment  of 
principles  which  at  the  same  time  that  they  are  given  to  us  by 
the  surest  of  all  experiences,  that  of  consciousness,  have  a  bearing 
superior  to  experience,  and  open  to  us  regions  inaccessible  to 
empiricism.  We  have  recognized  such  principles  at  the  head  of 
nearly  all  the  sciences ;  then,  searching  among  our  different  facul- 
ties for  that  which  may  have  given  them  to  us,  we  have  ascer- 
tained that  it  is  impossible  to  refer  them  to  any  other  faculty 
than  to  that  general  faculty  of  knowing  which  we  call  reason, 
very  different  from  reasoning,  to  which  it  furnishes  its  laws. 

That  is  the  point  at  which  we  have  arrived.  But  is  it  possible 
to  stop  there  ? 

In  human  intelligence,  as  it  is  now  developed,  universal  and 
necessary  principles  are  offered  to  us  under  forms  in  some  sort 
consecrated.  The  principle  of  causality,  for  example,  is  thus 
enounced  to  us : — Every  thing  that  begins  to  appear  necessarily 
has  a  cause.  Other  principles  have  this  same  axiomatic  form. 
But  have  they  always  had  it,  and  did  they  spring  from  the 


52  LECTURE    SECOND. 

human  mind  with  this  logical  and  scholastic  apparel,  as  Minerva 
sprang  all  armed  from  the  head  of  Jupiter  ?  With  what  charac- 
ters did  they  show  themselves  at  first,  before  taking  those  in  which 
they  are  now  clothed,  and  which  can  scarcely  be  their  primitive 
characters  ?  In  a  word,  is  it  possible  to  find  the  origin  of  uni- 
versal and  necessary  principles,  and  the  route  which  they  must 
have  followed  in  order  to  arrive  at  what  they  are  to-day  ?  'A 
new  problem,  the  importance  of  which  it  is  easy  to  feel ;  for,  if  it 
can  be  resolved,  what  light  will  be  shed  upon  these  principles  ! 
On  the  other  hand,  what  difficulties  must  be  encountered  !  How 
can  we  penetrate  to  the  sources  of  human  knowledge,  which  are 
concealed,  like  those  of  the  Nile  ?  Is  it  not  to  be  feared  that,  in 
plunging  into  the  obscure  past,  instead  of  truth,  one  may  encoun- 
ter an  hypothesis ;  that,  attaching  himself,  then,  to  this  hypothesis, 
he  may  transport  it  from  the  past  to  the  present,  and  that,  being 
deceived  in  regard  to  the  origin  of  principles,  he  may  be  led  to 
misconceive  their  actual  and  certain  characters,  or,  at  least,  to 
mutilate  and  enfeeble  those  which  the  adopted  origin  would  not 
easily  explain  ?  This  danger  is  so  great,  this  rock  is  so  celebrated 
in  shipwrecks,  that  before  braving  it  one  should  know  how-to 
take  many  precautions  against  the  seductions  of  the  spirit  of  the 
system.  It  is  even  conceived  that  great  philosophers,  who  were 
timid  in  no  place,  have  suppressed  the  perilous  problem.  In  fact, 
by  undertaking  to  grapple  with  this  problem  at  first,  Locke  and 
Condillac  went  far  astray,1  and  it  must  be  said,  corrupted  all  phi- 
losophy at  its  source.  The  empirical  school,  which  lauds  the 
experimental  method  so  much,  turns  its  back  upon  it,  thus  to 
speak,  when,  instead  of  commencing  by  the  study  of  the  actual 
characters  of  our  cognitions,  as  they  are  attested  to  us  by  con- 
sciousness and  reflection,  it  plunges,  without  light  and  without 
guidance,  into  the  pursuit  of  their  origin.  Reid2  and  Kant3 
showed  themselves  much  more  observing  by  confining  themselves 


1  First  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lectures  1,  2,  and  3. 

*  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.,  etc.  3  Ibid.,  vol.  v.,  lecture  8. 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   PRINCIPLES.  53 

within  the  limits  of  the  present,  through  fear  of  losing  themselves 
in  the  darkness  of  the  past.  Both  freely  treat  of  universal  and 
necessary  principles  in  the  form  which  they  now  have,  without 
asking  what  was  their  primitive  form.  We  much  prefer  this 
wise  circumspection  to  the  adventurous  spirit  of  the  empirical 
school.  Nevertheless,  when  a  problem  is  given  out,  so  long  as  it 
is  not  solved,  it  troubles  and  besets  the  human  mind.  Philoso- 
phy ought  not  to  shun  it  then,  but  its  duty  is  to  approach  it  only 
with  extreme  prudence  and  a  severe  method. 

We  cannot  recollect  too  well,  for  the  sake  of  others  and  our- 
selves, that  the  primitive  state  of  human  cognitions  is  remote 
from  us ;  we  can  scarcely  bring  it  within  the  reach  of  our  vision 
and  submit  it  to  observation ;  the  actual  state,  on  the  contrary, 
is  always  at  our  disposal :  it  is  sufficient  for  us  to  enter  into  our- 
selves, to  fathom  consciousness  by  reflection,  and  make  it  give 
up  what  it  contains.  Setting  out  from  certain  facts,  we  shall  not 
be  liable  to  wander  subsequently  into  hypotheses,  or  if,  in  ascend- 
ing to  the  primitive  state,  we  fall  into  any  error,  we  shall  be  able 
to  perceive  it  and  repair  it  by  the  aid  of  the  truth  which  an  im- 
partial observation  shall  have  given  us ;  every  origin  which  shall 
not  legitimately  end  at  the  point  where  we  are,  is  by  that  alone 
convicted  of  being  false,  and  will  deserve  to  be  discarded.1 

You  know  that  a  large  portion  of  the  last  year  was  spent  upon 
this  question.  We  took,  one  by  one,  universal  and  necessary 
questions  submitted  to  our  examination,  in  order  to  determine 


1  We  have  everywhere  called  to  mind,  maintained,  and  confirmed  by  the 
errors  of  those  who  have  dared  to  break  it,  this  rule  of  true  psychological 
analysis,  that,  before  passing  to  the  question  of  the  origin  of  an  idea,  a  no- 
tion, a  belief,  any  principle  whatever,  the  actual  characters  of  this  idea,  this 
notion,  this  belief,  this  principle,  must  have  been  a  long  time  studied  and 
well  established,  with  the  firm  resolution  of  not  altering  them  under  any 
pretext  whatever  in  wishing  to  explain  them.  We  believe  that  we  have,  as 
Leibnitz  says,  settled  this  point.  See  1st  Series,  vol.  L,  Programme  of  the 
Course  of  1817,  and  the  Opening  Discourse;  vol.  iii.,  lecture  1,  Locke;  lec- 
ture 2,  Condillac ;  lecture  3,  almost  entire,  and  lecture  8,  p.  260  ;  2d  Series, 
vol.  iii.,  Exdmen  du  Systeme  de  Loch,  lecture  16,  p.  77 — 87 ;  3d  Series,  vol. 
iv.,  Examination  of  the  Lectures  of  M.  Loremquiere,  p.  268. 


54:  LECTURE    SECOND. 

the  origin  of  each  one  of  them,  its  primitive  form,  and  the  dif- 
ferent forms  which  have  successively  clothed  it ;  only  after  hav- 
ing operated  thus  upon  a  sufficiently  large  number  of  principles, 
did  we  come  slowly  to  a  general  conclusion,  and  that  conclusion 
we  believe  ourselves  entitled  to  express  here  briefly  as  the  solid 
result  of  a  most  circumspect  analysis,  and,  at  least,  a  most 
methodical  labor.  We  must  either  renew  before  you  this  labor, 
this  analysis,  and  thereby  run  the  risk  of  not  being  able  to  com- 
plete the  long  course  that  we  have  marked  out  for  ourselves,  or 
we  must  limit  ourselves  to  reminding  you  of  the  essential  traits 
of  the  theory  at  which  we  arrived. 

This  theory,  moreover,  is  in  itself  so  simple,  that,  without  the 
dress  of  regular  demonstrations  upon  which  it  is  founded,  its  own 
evidence  will  sufficiently  establish  it.  It  wholly  rests  upon  the 
distinction  between  the  different  forms  under  which  truth  is  pre- 
sented to  us.  It  is,  in  its  somewhat  arid  generality,  as  follows  : 

1st.  One  can  perceive  truth  in  two  different  ways.  Sometimes 
one  perceives  it  in  such  or  such  a  particular  circumstance.  For 
example,  in  presence  of  two  apples  or  two  stones,  and  of  two 
other  similar  objects  placed  by  the  side  of  the  first,  I  perceive  this 
truth  with  absolute  certainty,  viz.,  that  these  two  stones  and 
these  two  other  stones  make  four  stones, — which  is  in  some  sort 
a  concrete  apperception  of  the  truth,  because  the  truth  is  given 
to  us  in  regard  to  real  and  determinate  objects.  Sometimes  I 
also  affirm  in  a  general  manner  that  two  and  two  equal  four, 
abstracting  every  determinate  object, — which  is  the  abstract  con- 
ception of  truth. 

Now,  of  these  two  ways  of  knowing  truth,  which  precedes  in 
the  chronological  order  of  human  knowledge  ?  Is  it  not  certain, 
may  it  not  be  avowed  by  every  one,  that  the  particular  precedes 
the  general,  that  the  concrete  precedes  the  abstract,  that  we  begin 
by  perceiving  such  or  such  a  determinate  truth,  in  such  or  such 
a  case,  at  such  or  such  a  moment,  in  such  or  such  a  place,  before 
conceiving  a  general  truth,  independently  of  every  application 
and  different  circumstances  of  place  and  time  ? 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   PRINCIPLES.  55 

2d.  We  can  perceive  the  same  truth  without  asking  ourselves 
this  question :  Have  we  the  ability  not  to  admit  this  truth  ?  We 
perceive  it,  then,  by  virtue  alone  of  the  intelligence  which  has 
been  given  us,  and  which  enters  spontaneously  into  exercise ;  or 
rather,  we  try  to  doubt  the  truth  which  we  perceive,  we  attempt 
to  deny  it ;  we  are  not  able  to  do  it,  and  then  it  is  presented  to 
reflection  as  superior  to  all  possible  negation ;  it  appears  to  us  no 
longer  only  as  a  truth,  but  as  a  necessary  truth. 

Is  it  not  also  evident,  that  we  do  not  begin  by  reflection,  that 
reflection  supposes  an  anterior  operation,  and  that  this  operation, 
in  order  not  to  be  one  of  reflection,  and  not  to  suppose  another 
before  it,  must  be  entirely  spontaneous ;  that  thus  the  spontaneous 
and  instinctive  intuition  of  truth  precedes  its  reflection  and  neces- 
sary conception  ? 

Reflection  is  a  progress  more  or  less  tardy  in  the  individual 
and  in  the  race.  It  is,  par  excellence,  the  philosophic  faculty  ;  it 
sometimes  engenders  doubt  and  skepticism,  sometimes  convictions 
that,  for  being  rational,  are  only  the  more  profound.  It  con- 
structs systems,  it  creates  artificial  logic,  and  all  those  formulas 
which  we  now  use  by  the  force  of  habit  as  if  they  were  natural 
to  us.  But  spontaneous  intuition  is  the  true  logic  of  nature.  It 
presides  over  the  acquisition  of  nearly  all  our  cognitions.  Chil- 
dren, the  people,  three-fourths  of  the  human  race  never  pass  be- 
yond it,  and  rest  there  with  boundless  security. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  human  cognitions  is  thus  re- 
solved for  us  in  the  simplest  manner :  it  is  enough  for  us  to  de- 
termine that  operation  of  the  mind  which  precedes  all  others, 
without  which  no  other  would  take  place,  and  which  is  the  first 
exercise,  and  the  first  form  of  our  faculty  of  knowing.1 

1  This  theory  of  spontaneity  and  of  reflection,  which  in  our  view  is  the 
key  to  so  many  difficulties,  continually  recurs  in  our  works.  One  may  see, 
vol.  i.  of  the  1st  Series,  in  a  programme  of  the  Course  of  1817,  and  in  a  frag- 
ment entitled  De  la  Spontaneite  et  dela  Reflexion  ;  vol.  iv.  of  the  same  Series, 
Examination  of  Reid's  Philosophy,  passim  ;  vol.  v.,  Examination  of  Kant's 
System,  lecture  8  ;  2d  Series,  vol.  i.,  passim;  vol.  iii.,  Lectures  on  Judg- 
ment ;  8d  Series,  Fragments  Pkilosophiques,  vol.  iv.,  preface  of  the  first  edi- 


56  LECTURE    SECOND. 

Since  every  thing  that  bears  the  character  of  reflection  cannot 
be  primitive,  and  supposes  an  anterior  state,  it  follows,  that  the 
principles  which  are  the  subject  of  our  study  could  not  have 
possessed  at  first  the  reflective  and  abstract  character  with  which 
they  are  now  marked,  that  they  must  have  shown  themselves  at 
their  origin  in  some  particular  circumstance,  under  a  concrete  and 
determinate  form,  and  that  in  time  they  were  disengaged  from 
this  form,  in  order  to  be  invested  with  their  actual,  abstract,  and 
universal  form.  These  are  the  two  ends  of  the  chain  ;  it  remains 
for  us  to  seek  how  the  human  mind  has  been  from  one  to  the 
other,  from  the  primitive  state  to  the  actual  state,  from  the  con- 
crete state  to  the  abstract  state. 

How  can  we  go  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract  ?  Evidently 
by  that  well-known  operation  which  is  called  abstraction.  Thus 
far,  nothing  is  more  simple.  But  it  is  necessary  to  discriminate 
between  two  sorts  of  abstractions. 

In  presence  of  several  particular  objects,  you  omit  the  charac- 
ters which  distinguish  them,  and  separately  consider  a  character 
which  is  common  to  them  all — you  abstract  this  character. 
Examine  the  nature  and  conditions  of  this  abstraction ;  it  pro- 
ceeds by  means  of  comparison,  and  it  is  founded  on  a  certain 
number  of  particular  and  different  cases.  Take  an  example : 
examine  how  we  form  the  abstract  and  general  idea  of  color. 
Place  before  my  eyes  for  the  first  time  a  white  object.  Can  I 
here  at  the  first  step  immediately  arrive  at  a  general  idea  of 
color  ?  Can  I  at  first  place  on  one  side  the  whiteness,  and  on 
the  other  side  the  color  ?  Analyze  what  passes  within  you. 
You  experience  a  sensation  of  whiteness.  Omit  the  individuality 
of  this  sensation,  and  you  wholly  destroy  it ;  you  cannot  neglect 
the  whiteness,  and  preserve  or  abstract  the  color ;  for,  a  single 
color  being  given,  which  is  a  white  color,  if  you  take  away  that, 


tion,  p.  37,  etc. ;  it  will  be  found  in  different  lectures  of  this  volume,  among 
others,  in  the  third,  On  the  value  of  Universal  and  Necessary  Principles  ;  in 
the  fifth,  On  Mysticism ;  and  in  the  eleventh,  Primary  Data  of  Common 
Sense. 


THE  ORIGIN   OF  PRINCIPLES.  57 

there  remains  to  you  absolutely  nothing  in  regard  to  color.  Let 
a  blue  object  succeed  this  white  object,  then  a  red  object,  etc. ; 
having  sensations  differing  from  each  other,  you  can  neglect  their 
differences,  and  only  consider  what  they  have  in  common,  that 
they  are  sensations  of  sight,  that  is  to  say,  colors,  and  you  thus 
obtain  the  abstract  and  general  idea  of  color.  Take  another  ex- 
ample :  if  you  had  never  smelled  but  a  single  flower,  the  violet, 
for  instance,  would  you  have  had  the  idea  of  odor  in  general  ? 
No.  The  odor  of  the  violet  would  be  for  you  the  only  odor, 
beyond  which  you  would  not  seek,  you  could  not  even  imagine 
another.  But  if  to  the  odor  of  the  violet  is  added  that  of  the 
rose,  and  other  different  odors,  in  a  greater  or  less  number,  pro- 
vided there  be  several,  and  a  comparison  be  possible,  and  conse- 
quently, knowledge  of  their  differences  and  their  resemblances, 
then  you  will  be  able  to  form  the  general  idea  of  odor.  What 
is  there  in  common  between  the  odor  of  one  flower  and  that  of 
another  flower,  except  that  they  have  been  smelled  by  aid  of  the 
same  organ,  and  by  the  same  person  ?  What  here  renders  gen- 
eralization possible,  is  the  unity  of  the  sentient  subject  which  re- 
members having  been  modified,  while  remaining  the  same,  by 
different  sensations;  now,  this  subject  can  feel  itself  identical 
under  different  modifications,  and  it  can  conceive  in  the  qualities 
of  the  object  felt  some  resemblance  and  some  dissimilarity,  only 
on  the  condition  of  a  certain  number  of  sensations  experienced, 
of  odors  smelled.  In  that  case,  but  in  that  case  alone,  there  can 
be  comparison,  abstraction,  and  generalization,  because  there  are 
different  and  similar  elements. 

In  order  to  arrive  at  the  abstract  form  of  universal  and  neces- 
sary principles,  we  have  no  need  of  all  this  labor.  Let  us  take 
again,  for  example,  the  principle  of  cause.  If  you  suppose  six 
particular  cases  from  which  you  have  abstracted  this  principle,  it 
will  contain  neither  more  nor  less  ideas  than  if  you  had  deduced 
it  from  a  single  one.  To  be  able  to  say  that  the  event  which  I 
see  must  have  a  cause,  it  is  not  indispensable  to  have  seen  several 
events  succeed  each  other.  The  principle  which  compels  me  to 

3* 


58  LECTURE    SECOND. 

pronounce  this  judgment,  is  already  complete  in  the  first  as  in 
the  last  event ;  it  can  change  in  respect  to  its  object,  it  cannot 
change  in  itself;  it  neither  increases  nor  decreases  with  the 
greater  or  less  number  of  its  applications.  The  only  difference 
that  it  is  subject  to  in  regard  to  us,  is,  that  we  apply  it  whether 
we  remark  it  or  not,  whether  we  disengage  it  or  not  from  its 
particular  application.  The  question  is  not  to  eliminate  the  par- 
ticularity of  the  phenomenon,  wherein  it  appears  to  us,  whether 
it  be  the  fall  of  a  leaf  or  the  murder  of  a  man,  in  order  imme- 
diately to  conceive,  in  a  general  and  abstract  manner,  the  neces- 
sity of  a  cause  for  every  thing  that  begins  to  exist.  Here,  it  is 
not  because  I  have  been  the  same,  or  have,  been  affected  in  the 
same  manner  in  several  different  cases,  that  I  have  come  to  this 
general  and  abstract  conception.  A  leaf  falls :  at  the  same  in-"' 
stant  I  think,  I  believe,  I  declare  that  this  falling  of  the  leaf  must 
have  a  cause.  A  man  has  been  killed :  at  the  same  instant  I 
believe,  I  proclaim  that  this  death  must  have  a  cause.  Each  one 
of  these  facts  contains  particular  and  variable  circumstances,  and 
something  universal  and  necessary,  to  wit,  both  of  them  cannot 
but  have  a  cause.  Now,  I  am  perfectly  able  to  disengage  the 
universal  from  the  particular,  in  regard  to  the  first  fact  as  well  as 
in  regard  to  the  second  fact,  for  the  universal  is  in  the  first  quite 
as  well  as  in  the  second.  In  fact,  if  the  principle  of  causality  is 
not  universal  in  the  first  fact,  neither  will  it  be  in  the  second,  nor 
in  the  third,  nor  in  a  thousandth ;  for  a  thousand  are  not  nearer 
than  one  to  the  infinite,  to  absolute  universality.  It  is  the  same, 
and  still  more  evidently,  with  necessity.  Pay  particular  attention 
to  this  point :  if  necessity  is  not  in  the  first  fact,  it  cannot  be  in 
any ;  for  necessity  cannot  be  formed  little  by  little,  and  by  suc- 
cessive increment.  If,  at  the  first  murder  that  I  see,  I  do  not 
exclaim  that  this  murder  necessarily  has  a  cause,  at  the  thousandth 
murder,  although  it  shall  have  been  proved  that  all  the  others 
have  had  causes,  I  shall  have  the  right  to  think  that  this  new 
murder  has,  very  probably,  also  its  cause ;  but  I  shall  never  have 
the  right  to  declare  that  it  necessarily  has  a  cause.  But  when 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   PRINCIPLES.  59 

necessity  and  universality  are  already  in  a  single  case,  that  case 
alone  is  sufficient  to  entitle  us  to  deduce  them  from  it.1 

We  have  established  the  existence  of  universal  and  necessary 
principles :  we  have  marked  their  origin ;  we  have  shown  that 
they  appear  to  us  at  first  from  a  particular  fact,  and  we  have 
shown  by  what  process,  by  what  sort  of  abstraction  the  mind  dis- 
engages them  from  the  determinate  and  concrete  form  which  en- 
velops them,  but  does  not  constitute  them.  Our  task,  then, 
seems  accomplished.  But  it  is  not, — we  must  defend  the  solution 
which  we  have  just  presented  to  you  of  the  problem  of  the  origin 
of  principles  against  the  theory  of  an  eminent  metaphysician, 
whose  just  authority  might  seduce  you.  M.  Maine  de  Biran* 
is,  like  us,  the  declared  adversary  of  the  philosophy  of  sensa- 
tion,— he  admits  universal  and  necessary  principles;  but  the 
origin  which  he  assigns  to  them,  puts  them,  according  to 
us,  in  peril,  and  would  lead  back  by  a  detour  to  the  empirical 
school. 

Universal  and  necessary  principles,  if  expressed  in  propositions, 
embrace  several  terms.  For  example,  in  the  principle  that  every 
phenomenon  supposes  a  cause  ;  and  in  this,  that  every  quality 
supposes  a  substance,  by  the  side  of  the  ideas  of  quality  and  phe- 
nomenon are  met  the  ideas  of  cause  and  substance,  which  seem 
the  foundation  of  these  two  principles.  M.  de  Biran  pretends  that 
the  two  ideas  are  anterior  to  the  two  principles  which  contain 
them,  and  that  we  at  first  find  these  ideas  in  ourselves  in  the 
consciousness  that  we  are  cause  and  substance,  and  that,  these 
ideas  once  being  thus  acquired,  induction  transports  them  out  of 
ourselves,  makes  us  conceive  causes  and  substances  wherever  there 
are  phenomena  and  qualities,  and  that  the  principles  of  cause  and 
substance  are  thus  explained.  I  beg  pardon  of  my  illustrious 


1  On  immediate  abstraction  and  comparative  abstraction,  see  1st  Series, 
vol.  i.,  Programme  of  the  Course  of  1817,  and  everywhere  in  our  other 
Courses. 

1  On  M.  de  Biran,  on  his  merits  and  defects,  s'ee  our  Introduction  at  the 
head  of  his  Works. 


60  LECTURE   SECOND. 

friend ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  admit  in  the  least  degree  this 
explanation. 

The  possession  of  the  origin  of  the  idea  of  cause  is  by  no  means 
sufficient  for  the  possession  of  the  origin  of  the  principle  of  caus- 
ality ;  for  the  idea  and  the  principle  are  things  essentially  different. 
You  have  established,  I  would  say  to  M.  de  Biran,  that  the  idea 
of  cause  is  found  in  that  of  productive  volition  : — you  will  to  pro- 
duce certain  effects,  and  you  produce  them ;  hence  the  idea  of  a 
cause,  of  a  particular  cause,  which  is  yourself;  but  between  this 
fact  and  the  axiom  that  all  phenomena  which  appear  necessarily 
have  a  cause,  there  is  a  gulf. 

You  believe  that  you  can  bridge  it  over  by  induction.  The 
idea  of  cause  once  found  in  ourselves,  induction  applies  it,  you 
say,  wherever  a  new  phenomenon  appears.  But  let  us  not  be 
deceived  by  words,  and  let  us  account  for  this  extraordinary 
induction.  The  following  dilemma  I  submit  with  confidence  to 
the  loyal  dialectics  of  M.  de  Biran  : 

Is  the  induction  of  which  you  speak  universal  and  necessary  ? 
Then  it  is  a  different  name  for  the  same  thing.  An  induction 
which  forces  us  universally  and  necessarily  to  associate  the  idea 
of  cause  with  that  of  every  phenomenon  that  begins  to  appear  is 
precisely  what  is  called  the  principle  of  causality.  On  the  con- 
trary, is  this  induction  neither  universal  nor  necessary  ?  It  cannot 
supply  the  place  of  the  principle  of  cause,  and  the  explanation 
destroys  the  thing  to  be  explained. 

It  follows  from  this  that  the  only  true  result  of  these  various 
psychological  investigations  is,  that  the  idea  of  personal  and  free 
cause  precedes  all  exercise  of  the  principle  of  causality,  but  with- 
out explaining  it. 

The  theory  which  we  combat  is  much  more  powerless  in  regard 
to  other  principles  wnich,  far  from  being  exercised  before  the  ideas 
from  which  it  is  pretended  to  deduce  them,  precede  them,  and 
even  give  birth  to  them.  How  have  we  acquired  the  idea  of  time 
and  that  of  space,  except  by  aid  of  the  principle  that  the  bodies 
and  events,  which  we  see  are  in  time  and  in  space  ?  We  have 


THE   OEIGIN   OF   PKESTCIPLES.  61 

seen1  that,  without  this  principle,  and  confined  to  the  data  of  the 
senses  and  consciousness,  neither  time  nor  space  would  exist  for 
us.  Whence  have  we  deduced  the  idea  of  the  infinite,  except 
from  the  principle  that  the  finite  supposes  the  infinite,  that  all 
finite  and  defective  things,  which  we  perceive  by  our  senses  and 
feel  within  us,  are  not  sufficient  for  themselves,  and  suppose  some- 
thing infinite  and  perfect  ?  Omit  the  principle,  and  the  idea  of 
the  infinite  is  destroyed.  Evidently  this  idea  is  derived  from  the 
application  of  the  principle,  and  it  is  not  the  principle  which  is 
derived  from  the  idea. 

Let  us  dwell  a  little  longer  on  the  principle  of  substances.  The 
question  is  to  know  whether  the  idea  of  subject,  of  substance, 
precedes  or  follows  the  exercise  of  the  principle.  Upon  what 
ground  could  the  idea  of  substance  be  anterior  to  the  principle 
that  every  quality  supposes  a  substance  ?  Upon  the  ground  alone 
that  substance  be  the  object  of  self-observation,  as  cause  is  said  to 
be.  When  I  produce  a  certain  effect,  I  may  perceive  myself  in 
action  and  as  cause ;  in  that  case,  there  would  be  no  need  of  the 
intervention  of  any  principle ;  but  it  is  not,  it  cannot  be,  the  same, 
when  the  question  is  concerning  the  substance  which  is  the  basis 
of  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  of  our  qualities,  our  acts,  our 
faculties  even ;  for  this  substance  is  not  directly  observable ;  it 
does  not  perceive  itself,  it  conceives  itself.  Consciousness  per- 
ceives sensation,  volition,  thought,  it  does  not  perceive  their 
subject.  Who  has  ever  perceived  the  soul  ?  Has  it  not  been 
necessary,  in  order  to  attain  this  invisible  essence,  to  set  out  from 
a  principle  which  has  the  power  to  bind  the  visible  to  the  invisible, 
phenomenon  to  being,  to  wit,  the  principle  of  substances  ?8  The 
idea  of  substance  is  necessarily  posterior  to  the  application  of  the 
principle,  and,  consequently,  it  cannot  explain  its  formation. 

Let  us  be  well  understood.     We  do  not 'mean  to  say  that  we 


2  See  lecture  1. 

2  See  vol.  i.  of  the  1st  Series,  course  of  1816,  and  2d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture 
18,  p.  140-146. 


•Pr 


62  LECTURE   SECOND. 

have  in  the  mind  the  principle  of  substances  before  perceiving  a 
phenomenon,  quite  ready  to  apply  the  principle  to  the  phenome- 
non, when  it  shall  present  itself;  we  only  say  that  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  perceive  a  phenomenon  without  conceiving  at  the  same 
instant  a  substance,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  power  of  perceiving  a 
phenomenon,  either  by  the  senses  or  by  consciousness,  is  joined 
that  of  conceiving  the  substance  in  which  it  inheres.  The  facts 
thus  take  place : — the  perception  of  phenomena  and  the  concep- 
tion of  the  substance  which  is  their  basis  are  not  successive,  they 
are  simultaneous.  Before  this  impartial  analysis  fall  at  once  two 
equal  and  opposite  errors — one,  that  experience,  exterior  or  inte- 
rior, can  beget  principles ;  the  other,  that  principles  precede 
experience.1 

To  sum  up,  the  pretension  of  explaining  principles  by  the  ideas 
which  they  contain,  is  a  chimerical  one.  In  supposing  that  all 
the  ideas  which  enter  into  principles  are  anterior  to  them,  it  is 
necessary  to  show  how  principles  are  deduced  from  these  ideas, — 
which  is  the  first  and  radical  difficulty.  Moreover,  it  is  not  true 
that  in  all  cases  ideas  precede  principles,  for  often  principles  pre- 
cede ideas, — a  second  difficulty  equally  insurmountable.  But 
whether  ideas  are  anterior  or  posterior  to  principles,  principles 
are  always  independent  of  them ;  they  surpass  them  by  all  the 
superiority  of  universal  and  necessary  principles  over  simple 
ideas.2 

We  should,  perhaps,  beg  your  pardon  for  the  austerity  of  this 

1  We  have  developed  this  analysis,  and  elucidated  these  results  in  the  17th 
lecture  of  vol.  ii.  of  the  2d  Series. 

*  We  have  already  twice  recurred,  and  more  in  detail,  to  the  impossibility 
of  legitimately  explaining  universal  and  necessary  principles  by  any  associa- 
tion or  induction  whatever,  founded  upon  any  particular  idea,  2d  Series,  vol. 
iii.,  Examen  du  Systeme  de  Locke,  lecture  19,  p.  166;  and  3d  Series,  vol.  iv., 
Introduction  aux  CEuvres  de  M.  de  Biran,  p.  319.  We  have  also  made  known 
the  opinion  of  Eeid,  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  22,  p.  489.  Finally,  the  pro- 
foundest  of  Eeid's  disciples,  the  most  enlightened  judge  that  we  know  of 
things  philosophical,  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  professor  of  logic  in  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  has  not  hesitated  to  adopt  the  conclusions  of  our  discussion,  to 
which  he  is  pleased  to  refer  his  readers : — Discussions  on  Philosophy  and 
Literature,  etc.,  by  Sir  William  Hamilton,  London,  1852.  Appendix  1,  p.  588. 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   PRINCIPLES.  63 

lecture.  But  philosophical  questions  must  be  treated  philosophi- 
cally :  it  does  not  belong  to  us  to  change  their  character.  On 
other  subjects,  another  language.  Psychology  has  its  own  lan- 
guage, the  entire  merit  of  which  is  a  severe  precision,  as  the 
highest  law  of  psychology  itself  is  the  shunning  of  every  hy- 
pothesis, and  an  inviolable  respect  for  facts.  This  law  we  have 
religiously  followed.  While  investigating  the  origin  of  universal 
and  necessary  principles,  we  have  especially  endeavored  not  to 
destroy  the  thing  to  be  explained  by  a  systematic  explanation. 
Universal  and  necessary  principles  have  come  forth  in  their  in- 
tegrity from  our  analysis.  We  have  given  the  history  of  the 
different  forms  which  they  successively  assume,  and  we  have 
shown,  that  in  all  these  changes  they  remain  the  same,  and  of 
the  same  authority,  whether  they  enter  spontaneously  and  invol- 
untarily into  exercise,  and  apply  themselves  to  particular  and  de- 
terminate objects,  or  reflection  turns  them  back  upon  themselves 
in  order  to  interrogate  them  in  regard  to  their  nature,  or  abstrac- 
tion makes  them  appear  under  the  form  in  which  their  univer- 
sality and  their  necessity  are  manifest.  Their  certainty  is  the 
same  under  all  their  forms,  in  all  their  applications ;  it  has  neither 
generation  nor  origin ;  it  is  not  born  such  or  such  a  day,  and  it 
does  not  increase  with  time,  for  it  knows  no  degrees.  We  have 
not  commenced  by  believing  a  little  in  the  principle  of  causality, 
of  substances,  of  time,  of  space,  of  the  infinite,  etc.,  then  be- 
lieving a  little  more,  then  believing  wholly.  These  principles 
have  been,  from  the  beginning,  what  they  will  be  in  the  end,  all- 
powerful,  necessary,  irresistible.  The  conviction  which  they  give 
is  always  absolute,  only  it  is  not  always  accompanied  by  a  clear 
consciousness.  Leibnitz  himself  has  no  more  confidence  in  the 
principle  of  causality,  and  even  in  his  favorite  principle  of  suffi- 
cient reason,  than  the  most  ignorant  of  men ;  but  the  latter  ap- 
plies these  principles  without  reflecting  on  their  power,  by  which 
he  is  unconsciously  governed,  whilst  Leibnitz  is  astonished  at  their 
power,  studies  it,  and  for  all  explanation,  refers  it  to  the  human 
mind,  and  to  the  nature  of  things,  that  is  to  say,  he  elevates,  to 


64  LECTUKE  SECOND. 

borrow  the  fine  expression  of  M.  Eoyer-Collard,1  the  ignorance 
of  the  mass  of  men  to  its  highest  source.  Such  is,  thank  heaven, 
the  only  difference  that  separates  the  peasant  from  the  philoso- 
pher, in  regard  to  those  great  principles  of  every  kind  which,  in 
one  way  or  another,  discover  to  men  the  same  truths  indispensa- 
ble to  their  physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  existence,  and,  in 
their  ephemeral  life,  on  the  circumscribed  point  of  space  and 
time  where  fortune  has  thrown  them,  reveal  to  them  something 
of  the  universal,  the  necessary,  and  the  infinite. 


1  (Euvres  de  Jieid,  vol.  iv.,  p.  435.  "  When  we  revolt  against  primitive 
facts,  we  equally  misconceive  the  constitution  of  our  intelligence  and  the  end 
of  philosophy.  Is  explaining  a  fact  any  thing  else  than  deriving  it  from 
another  fact,  and  if  this  kind  of  explanation  is  to  terminate  at  all,  does  it 
not  suppose  facts  inexplicable  ?  The  science  of  the  human  mind  will  have 
been  carried  to  the  highest  degree  of  perfection  it  can  attain,  it  will  be  com- 
plete, when  it  shall  know  how  to  derive  ignorance  from  the  most  elevated 
source." 


LECTUKE    III. 

ON  THE  VALUE   OF  UNIVERSAL  AND   NECESSARY   PRINCIPLES. 

Examination  and    refutation  of   Kant's    skepticism.  —  Recurrence  to  the 
theory  of  spontaneity  and  reflection. 

• 

AFTER  having  recognized  the  existence  of  universal  and  neces- 
sary principles,  their  actual  characters,  and  their  primitive  char- 
acters, we  have  to  examine  their  value,  and  the  legitimacy  of  the 
conclusions  which  may  be  drawn  from  them, — we  pass  from  psy- 
chology to  logic. 

We  have  defended  against  Locke  and  his  school  the  necessity 
and  universality  of  certain  principles.  We  now  come  to  Kantr 
who  recognizes  with  us  these  principles,  but  confines  their  power 
within  the  limits  of  the  subject  that  conceives  them,  and,  so  far 
as  subjective,  declares  them  to  be  without  legitimate  application 
to  any  object,  that  is  to  say,  without  objectivity,  to  use  the  lan- 
guage of  the  philosopher  of  Kcenigsberg,  which,  right  or  wrongr 
begins  to  pass  into  the  philosophic  language  of  Europe. 

Let  us  comprehend  well  the  import  of  this  new  discussion. 
The  principles  that  govern  our  judgments,  that  preside  over  most 
sciences,  that  rule  our  actions, — have  they  in  themselves  an  ab- 
solute truth,  or  are  they  only  regulating  laws  of  our  thought  ? 
The  question  is,  to  know  whether  it  is  true  in  itself,  that  every 
phenomenon  has  a  cause,  and  every  quality  a  subject,  whether 
every  thing  extended  is  really  in  space,  and  every  succession  in 
time,  etc.  If  it  is  not  absolutely  true  that  every  quality  has  its 
subject  of  inherence,  it  is  not,  then,  certain,  that  we  have  a  soul, 
a  real  substance  of  all  the  qualities  which  consciousness  attests. 


66  LECTURE   THIRD. 

If  the  principle  of  causality  is  only  a  law  of  our  mind,  the  ex- 
ternal world,  which  this  principle  discovers  to  us,  loses  its  reality, 
it  is  only  a  succession  of  phenomena,  without  any  effective 
action  over  each  other,  as  Hume  would  have  it,  and  even  the 
impressions  of  our  senses  are  destitute  of  causes.  Matter  exists 
no  more  than  the  soul.  Nothing  exists ;  every  thing  is  reduced 
to  mobile  appearances,  given  up  to  a  perpetual  becoming,  which 
again  is  accomplished  we  know  not  where,  since  in  reality  there 
is  neither  time  nor  space.  Since  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason 
only  serves  to  put  in  motion  human  curiosity,  once  in  possession 
of  the  fatal  secret  that  it  can  attain  nothing  real,  this  curiosity 
would  be  very  good  to  weary  itself  in  searching  for  reasons  which 
inevitably  escape  it,  and  in  discovering  relations  which  correspond 
only  to  the  wants  of  our  mind,  and  do  not  in  the  least  correspond 
to  the  nature  of  things.  In  fine,  if  the  principle  of  causality,  of 
substances,  of  final  causes,  of  sufficient  reason,  are  only  our 
modes  of  conception,  God,  whom  all  these  principles  reveal  to 
us,  will  no  more  be  any  thing  but  the  last  of  chimeras,  which 
vanishes  with  all  the  others  in  the  breath  of  the  Critique. 

Kant  has  established,  as  well  as  Reid  and  ourself,  the  existence 
of  universal  and  necessary  principles ;  but  an  involuntary  disciple 
of  his  century,  an  unconscious  servant  of  the  empirical  school,  to 
which  he  places  himself  in  the  attitude  of  an  adversary,  he  makes 
to  it  the  immense  concession  that  these  principles  are  applied  only 
to  the  impressions  of  sensibility,  that  their  part  is  to  put  these 
impressions  in  a  certain  order,  but  that  beyond  these  impressions, 
beyond  experience,  their  power  expires.  This  concession  has  ru- 
ined the  whole  enterprise  of  the  German  philosopher. 

This  enterprise  was  at  once  honest  and  great.  Kant,  grieved 
at  the  skepticism  of  his  times,  proposed  to  arrest  it  by  fairly  meet- 
ing it.  He  thought  to  disarm  Hume  by  conceding  to  him  that 
our  highest  conceptions  do  not  extend  themselves  beyond  the  in- 
closure  of  the  human  mind ;  and  at  the  same  time,  he  supposed  that 
he  had  sufficiently  vindicated  the  human  mind  by  restoring  to  it 
the  universal  and  necessary  principles  which  direct  it.  But,  ac- 


THE   VALUE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  67 

cording  to  the  strong  expression  of  M.  Royer-Collard,  "  one  does 
not  encounter  skepticism, — as  soon  as  he  has  penetrated  into  the 
human  understanding  he  has  completely  taken  it  by  storm."  A 
severe  circumspection  is  one  thing,  skepticism  is  another.  Doubt 
is  not  only  permitted,  it  is  commanded  by  reason  itself  in  the  em- 
ployment and  legitimate  applications  of  our  different  faculties ; 
but  when  it  is  applied  to  the  legitimacy  itself  of  our  faculties,  it 
no  longer  elucidates  reason,  it  overwhelms  it.  In  fact,  with  what 
would  you  have  reason  defend  herself,  when  she  has  called  herself 
in  question  ?  Kant  himself,  then,  overturned  the  dogmatism  which 
he  proposed  at  once  to  restrain  and  save,  at  least  in  morals,  and 
he  put  German  philosophy  upon  a  route,  at  the  end  of  which  was 
an  abyss.  In  vain  has  this  great  man — for  his  intentions  and  his 
character,  without  speaking  of  his  genius,  merit  for  him  this  name 
— undertaken  with  Hume  an  ingenious  and  learned  controversy ; 
he  has  been  vanquished  in  this  controversy,  and  Hume  remains 
master  of  the  field  of  battle. 

What  matters  it,  in  fact,  whether  there  may  or  may  not  be  in 
the  human  mind  universal  and  necessary  principles,  if  these  prin- 
ciples only  serve  to  classify  our  sensations,  and  to  make  us  ascend, 
step  by  step,  to  ideas  that  are  most  sublime,  but  have  for  ourselves 
no  reality  ?  The  human  mind  is,  then,  as  Kant  himself  well  ex- 
pressed it,  like  a  banker  who  should  take  bills  ranged  in  order  on 
his  desk  for  real  values ; — he  possesses  nothing  but  papers.  We 
have  thus  returned,  then,  to  that  concepfualism  of  the  middle  age, 
which,  concentrating  truth  within  the  human  intelligence,  makes 
the  nature  of  things  a  phantom  of  intelligence  projecting  itself 
everywhere  out  of  itself,  at  once  triumphant  and  impotent,  since 
it  produces  every  thing,  and  produces  only  chimeras.1 

1  On  conceptualism,  as  well  as  on  nominalism  and  realism,  see  the  Intro- 
duction to  the  inedited  works  of  Abelard,  and  also  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture 
21,  p.  457 ;  2d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  20,  p.  215,  and  the  work  already  cited 
on  the  Metaphysics  of  Aristotle,  p.  49  :  "  Nothing  exists  in  this  world  which 
has  not  its  law  more  general  than  itself.  There  is  no  individual  that  is  not 
related  to  a  species ;  there  are  no  phenomena  bound  together  that  are  not 
united  to  a  plan.  And  it  is  necessary  there  should  really  be  in  nature  species 


68  LECTURE    THIRD. 

The  reproach  which  a  sound  philosophy  will  content  itself  with 
making  to  Kant,  is,  that  his  system  is  not  in  accordance  with  facts. 
Philosophy  can  and  must  separate  itself  from  the  crowd  for  the 
explanation  of  facts ;  but,  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  it  must 
not  in  the  explanation  destroy  what  it  pretends  to  explain  ;  other- 
wise it  does  not  explain,  it  imagines.  Here,  the  important  fact 
which  it  is  the  question  to  explain  is  the  belief  itself  of  the  human 
mind,  and  the  system  of  Kant  annihilates  it. 

In  fact,  when  we  are  speaking  of  the  truth  of  universal  and 
necessary  principles,  we  do  not  believe  they  are  true  only  for  us : — 
we  believe  them  to  be  true  in  themselves,  and  still  true,  were  there 
no  mind  of  ours  to  conceive  them.  We  regard  them  as  inde- 
pendent of  us ;  they  seem  to  us  to  impose  themselves  upon  our 
intelligence  by  the  force  of  the  truth  that  is  in  them.  So,  in  or- 
der to  express  faithfully  what  passes  within  us,  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  reverse  the  proposition  of  Kant,  and  instead  of  saying  with 
him,  that  these  principles  are  the  necessary  laws  of  our  mind, 
therefore  they  have  no  absolute  value  out  of  our  mind ;  we  should, 
much  rather  say,  that  these  principles  have  an  absolute  value  in 
themselves,  therefore  we  cannot  but  believe  them. 

And  even  this  necessity  of  belief  with  which  the  new  skepticism 
arms  itself,  is  not  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  application 
of  principles.  We  have  established1  that  the  necessity  of  believ- 
ing supposes  reflection,  examination,  an  effort  to  deny  and  the 
want  of  power  to  do  it ;  but  before  all  reflection,  intelligence  spon- 
taneously seizes  the  truth,  and,  in  the  spontaneous  apperception. 


and  a  plan,  if  every  thing  has  been  made  with  weight  and  measure,  cum  pon~ 
dere  et  mensura,  without  which  our  very  ideas  of  species  and  a  plan  would 
only  be  chimeras,  and  human  science  a  systematic  illusion.  If  it  is  pretended 
that  there  are  individuals  and  no  species,  things  in  juxtaposition  and  no  plan  : 
for  example,  human  individuals  more  or  less  different,  and  no  human  type, 
and  a  thousand  other  things  of  the  same  sort,  well  and  good  ;  but  in  that 
case  there  is  nothing  general  in  the  world,  except  in  the  human  understand- 
ing, that  is  to  say,  in  other  terms,  the  world  and  nature  are  destitute  of  order 
and  reason  except  in  the  head  of  man." 
1  See  preceding  lecture. 


THE   VALUE    OF   PRINCIPLES.  69 

is  not  the  sentiment  of  necessity,  nor  consequently  that  character 
of  subjectivity  of  which  the  German  school  speaks  so  much. 

Let  us,  then,  here  recur  to  that  spontaneous  intuition  of  truth, 
which  Kant  knew  not,  in  the  circle  where  his  profoundly  reflec- 
tive and  somewhat  scholastic  habits  held  him  captive. 

Is  it  true  that  there  is  no  judgment,  even  affirmative  in  form, 
which  is  not  mixed  with  negation  ? 

It  seems  indeed  that  every  affirmative  judgment  is  at  the  same 
time  negative ;  in  fact,  to  affirm  that  a  thing  exists,  is  to  deny  its 
non-existence ;  as  every  negative  judgment  is  at  the  same  time 
affirmative ;  for  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  thing,  is  to  affirm  its 
non-existence.  If  it  is  so,  then  every  judgment,  whatever  may  be 
its  form,  affirmative  or  negative,  since  these  two  forms  come  back 
to  each  other,  supposes  a  pre-established  doubt  in  regard  to  the 
existence  of  the  thing  in  question,  supposes  some  exercise  of  re- 
flection, in  the  course  of  which  the  mind  feels  itself  constrained  to 
bear  such  or  such  a  judgment,  so  that  at  this  point  of  view  the 
foundation  of  the  judgment  seems  to  be  in  its  necessity ;  and  then 
recurs  the  celebrated  objection : — if  you  judge  thus  only  because 
it  is  impossible  for  you  not  to  do  it,  you  have  for  a  guaranty  of 
the  truth  nothing  but  yourself  and  your  own  ways  of  conceiving ; 
it  is  the  human  mind  that  transports  its  laws  out  of  itself;  it  is  the 
subject  that  makes  the  object  out  of  its  own  image,  without  ever 
going  beyond  the  inclosure  of  subjectivity. 

We  respond,  going  directly  to  the  root  of  the  difficulty : — it  is 
not  true  that  all  our  judgments  are  negative.  We  admit  that  in 
the  reflective  state  every  affirmative  judgment  supposes  a  negative 
judgment,  and  reciprocally.  But  is  reason  exercised  only  on  the 
condition  of  reflection  ?  Is  there  not  a  primitive  affirmation 
which  implies  no  negation  ?  As  we  often  act  without  deliberating 
on  our  action,  without  premeditating  it,  and  as  we  manifest  in  this 
case  an  activity  that  is  free  still,  but  free  with  a  liberty  that  is  not 
reflective;  so  reason  often  perceives  the  truth  without  traversing 
doubt  or  error.  Reflection  is  a  return  to  consciousness,  or  to  an 
operation  wholly  different  from  it.  We  do  not  find,  then,  in  any 


70  LECTURE   THIRD. 

primitive  fact,  that  every  judgment  which  contains  it  presupposes 
another  in  which  it  is  not.  We  thus  arrive  at  a  judgment  free 
from  all  reflection,  to  an  affirmation  without  any  mixture  of  nega- 
tion, to  an  immediate  intuition,  the  legitimate  child  of  the  natural 
energy  of  thought,  like  the  inspiration  of  the  poet,  the  instinct  of 
the  hero,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  prophet.  Such  is  the  first  act  of 
the  faculty  of  knowing.  If  one  contradicts  this  primitive  affirma- 
tion, the  faculty  of  knowing  falls  back  upon  itself,  examines  itself, 
attempts  to  call  in  doubt  the  truth  it  has  perceived  ;  it  cannot ;  it 
affirms  anew  what  it  had  affirmed  at  first ;  it  adheres  to  the  truth 
already  recognized,  but  with  a  new  sentiment,  the  sentiment  that 
it  is  not  in  its  power  to  divest  itself  of  the  evidence  of  this  same 
truth ;  then,  but  only  then,  appears  that  character  of  necessity  and 
subjectivity  that  some  would  turn  against  the  truth,  as  though 
truth  could  lose  its  own  value,  while  penetrating  deeper  into  the 
mind  and  there  triumphing  over  doubt ;  as  though  reflective  evi- 
dence of  it  were  the  less  evidence ;  as  though,  moreover,  the 
necessary  conception  of  it  were  the  only  form,  the  primary  form 
of  the  perception  of  truth.  The  skepticism  of  Kant,  to  which 
good  sense  so  easily  does  justice,  is  driven  to  the  extreme  and 
forced  within  its  intrenchment  by  the  distinction  between  sponta- 
neous reason  and  reflective  reason.  Reflection  is  the  theatre  of  the 
combats  which  reason  engages  in  with  itself,  with  doubt,  sophism, 
and  error.  But  above  reflection  is  a  sphere  of  light  and  peace, 
where  reason  perceives  truth  without  returning  on  itself,  for  the 
sole  reason  that  truth  is  truth,  and  because  God  has  made  the 
reason  to  perceive  it,  as  he  has  made  the  eye  to  see  and  the  ear 
to  hear. 

Analyze,  in  fact,  with  impartiality,  the  fact  of  spontaneous  ap- 
perception, and  you  will  be  sure  that  it  has  nothing  subjective  in 
it  except  what  it  is  impossible  it  should  not  have,  to  wit,  the  me 
which  is  mingled  with  the  fact  without  constituting  it.  The  me 
inevitably  enters  into  all  knowledge,  since  it  is  the  subject  of  it. 
Reason  directly  perceives  truth  ;  but  it  is  in  some  sort  augmented, 
in  consciousness,  and  then  we  have  knowledge.  Consciousness  is 


THE    VALUE    OF    PRINCIPLES.  71 

there  its  witness,  and  not  its  judge ;  its  only  judge  is  reason,  a 
faculty  subjective  and  objective  together,  according  to  the  lan- 
guage of  Germany,  which  immediately  attains  absolute  truth, 
almost  without  personal  intervention  on  our  part,  although  it 
might  not  enter  into  exercise  if  personality  did  not  precede  or 
were  not  added  to  it.1 

Spontaneous  apperception  constitutes  natural  logic.  Reflective 
conception  is  the  foundation  of  logic  properly  so  called.  One  is 
based  upon  itself,  verum  index  sui  ;  the  other  is  based  upon  the 
impossibility  of  the  reason,  in  spite  of  all  its  efforts,  not  betaking 
itself  to  truth  and  believing  in  it.  The  form  of  the  first  is  an 
affirmation  accompanied  with  an  absolute  security,  and  without 
the  least  suspicion  of  a  possible  negation ;  the  form  of  the  second 
is  reflective  affirmation,  that  is  to  say,  the  impossibility  of  deny- 
ing and  the  necessity  of  affirming.  The  idea  of  negation  governs 
ordinary  logic,  whose  affirmations  are  only  the  laborious  product 
of  two  negations.  Natural  logic  proceeds  by  affirmations 
stamped  with  a  simple  faith,  which  instinct  alone  produces  and 
sustains. 

Now,  will  Kant  reply  that  this  reason,  which  is  much  purer 
than  that  which  he  has  known  and  described,  which  is  wholly 
pure,  which  is  conceived  as  something  disengaged  from  reflection, 
from  volition,  from  every  thing  that  constitutes  personality,  is 
nevertheless  personal,  since  we  have  a  consciousness  of  it,  and 
since  it  is  thus  marked  with  subjectivity  ?  To  this  argument  we 
have  nothing  to  respond,  except  that  it  is  destroyed  in  the  excess 
of  its  pretension.  In  fact,  if,  that  reason  may  not  be  subjective, 
we  must  in  no  way  participate  in  it,  and  must  not  have  even  a 
consciousness  of  its  exercise,  then  there  is  no  means  of  ever  esca- 
ping this  reproach  of  subjectivity,  and  the  ideal  of  objectivity 
which  Kant  pursued  is  a  chimerical,  extravagant  ideal,  above, 
or  rather  beneath,  all  true  intelligence,  all  reason  worthy  the 


1  On  the  just  limits  of  the  personality  and  the  impersonality  of  reason,  see 
the  following  lecture,  near  the  close. 


72  LECTUKE   THIKD. 

name ;  for  it  is  demanding  that  this  intelligence  and  this  reason 
should  cease  to  have  consciousness  of  themselves,  whilst  this  is 
precisely  what  characterizes  intelligence  and  reason.1  Does  Kant 
mean,  then,  that  reason,  in  order  to  possess  a  really  objective 
power,  cannot  make  its  appearance  in  a  particular  subject,  that  it 
must  be,  for  example,  wholly  outside  of  the  subject  which  I  am  ? 
Then  it  is  nothing  for  me ;  a  reason  that  is  not  mine,  that,  under 
the  pretext  of  being  universal,  infinite,  and  absolute  in  its  essence, 
does  not  fall  under  the  perception  of  my  consciousness,  is  for  me 
as  if  it  were  not.  To  wish  that  reason  should  wholly  cease  to  be 
subjective,  is  to  demand  something  impossible  to  God  himself. 
No,  God  himself  can  understand  nothing  except  in  knowing  it, 
with  his  intelligence  and  with  the  consciousness  of  this  intelli- 
gence. There  is  subjectivity,  then,  in  divine  knowledge  itself;  if 
this  subjectivity  involves  skepticism,  God  is  also  condemned  to 
skepticism,  and  he  can  no  more  escape  from  it  than  men  ;  or  in- 
deed, if  this  is  too  ridiculous,  if  the  knowledge  which  God  has 
of  the  exercise  of  his  own  intelligence  does  not  involve  skepticism 
for  him,  neither  do  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  the  exercise 
of  our  intelligence,  and  the  subjectivity  attached  to  this  knowl- 
edge, involve  it  for  us. 

In  truth,  when  we  see  the  father  of  German  philosophy  thus 
losing  himself  in  the  labyrinth  of  the  problem  of  the  subjectivity 
and  the  objectivity  of  first  principles,  we  are  tempted  to  pardon 
Reid  for  having  disdained  this  problem,  for  limiting  himself  to 
repeating  that  the  absolute  truth  of  universal  and  necessary 
principles  rests  upon  the  veracity  of  our  faculties,  and  that  upon 
the  veracity  of  our  faculties  we  are  compelled  to  accept  their  tes- 
timony. "  To  explain,"  says  he,  "  why  we  are  convinced  by  our 
senses,  by  consciousness,  by  our  faculties,  is  an  impossible  thing ; 
we  say — this  is  so,  it  cannot  be  otherwise,  and  we  can  go  no  far- 
ther. Is  not  this  the  expression  of  an  irresistible  belief,  of  a  belief 

1  We  have  everywhere  maintained,  that  consciousness  is  the  condition,  or 
rather  the  necessary  form  of  intelligence.  Not  to  go  beyond  this  volume, 
see  farther  on,  lecture  5. 


THE  VALUE   OF   PKINCIPLES.  73 

which  is  the  voice  of  nature,  and  against  which  we  contend  in  vain  ? 
Do  we  wish  to  penetrate  farther,  to  demand  of  our  faculties,  one  by 
one,  what  are  their  titles  to  our  confidence,  and  to  refuse  them  con- 
fidence until  they  have  produced  their  claims  ?  Then,  I  fear  that 
this  extreme  wisdom  would  conduct  us  to  folly,  and  that,  not 
having  been  willing  to  submit  to  the  common  lot  of  humanity, 
we  should  be  deprived  of  the  light  of  common  sense."1 

Let  us  support  ourselves  also  by  the  following  admirable  pas- 
sage of  him  who  is,  for  so  many  reasons,  the  venerated  master  of 
the  French  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth  century.  "  Intellectual 
life,"  says  M.  Royer-Collard,  "  is  an  uninterrupted  succession,  not 
only  of  ideas,  but  of  explicit  or  implicit  beliefs.  The  beliefs  of 
the  mind  are  the  powers  of  the  soul  and  the  motives  of  the  will. 
That  which  determines  us  to  belief  we  call  evidence.  Reason 
renders  no  account  of  evidence ;  to  condemn  reason  to  account 
for  evidence,  is  to  annihilate  it,  for  it  needs  itself  an  evidence 
which  is  fitted  for  it.  These  are  fundamental  laws  of  belief 
which  constitute  intelligence,  and  as  they  flow  from  the  same 
source  they  have  the  same  authority ;  they  judge  by  the  same 
right ;  there  is  no  appeal  from  the  tribunal  of  one  to  that  of  an- 
other. He  who  revolts  against  a  single  one  revolts  against  all, 
and  abdicates  his  whole  nature."2 

Let  us  deduce  the  consequences  of  the  facts  of  which  we  have 
just  given  an  exposition. 

1st.  The  argument  of  Kant,  which  is  based  upon  the  charac- 
ter of  necessity  in  principles  in  order  to  weaken  their  objective 
authority,  applies  only  to  the  form  imposed  by  reflection  on  these 
principles,  and  does  not  reach  their  spontaneous  application, 
wherein  the  character  of  necessity  no  longer  appears. 

2d.  After  all,  to  conclude  with  the  human  race  from  the  neces- 
sity of  believing  in  the  truth  of  what  we  believe,  is  not  to  con- 
clude badly ;  for  it  is  reasoning  from  effect  to  cause,  from  the 
sign  to  the  thing  signified. 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  22,  p.  494. 
2  CEuvres  de  Reid,  vol.  iii.,  p.  450. 

4 


74:  LECTURE   THEBD. 

3d.  Moreover,  the  value  of  principles  is  above  all  demonstra- 
tion. Psychological  analysis  seizes,  takes,  as  it  were,  by  surprise, 
in  the  fact  of  intuition,  an  affirmation  that  is  absolute,  that  is  in- 
accessible to  doubt ;  it  establishes  it ;  and  this  is  equivalent  to 
demonstration.  To  demand  any  other  demonstration  than  this, 
is  to  demand  of  reason  an  impossibility,  since  absolute  principles, 
being  necessary  to  all  demonstration,  could  only  be  demonstrated 
by  themselves.1 

1  We  have  not  thought  it  best  to  make  this  lecture  lengthy  by  an  exposi- 
tion and  detailed  refutation  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  and  its  sad  con- 
clusion; the  little  that  we  say  of  it  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose,  which  is 
much  less  historical  than  dogmatical.  We  refer  the  reader  to  a  volume  that 
we  have  devoted  to  the  father  of  German  philosophy,  1st  Series,  vol.  v., 
in  which  we  have  again  taken  up  and  developed  some  of  the  arguments  that 
are  here  used,  in  which  we  believe  that  we  have  irresistibly  exposed  the 
capital  defect  of  the  transcendental  logic  of  Kant,  and  of  the  whole  German 
school,  that  it  leads  to  skepticism,  inasmuch  as  it  raises  superhuman,  chi- 
merical, extravagant  problems,  and,  when  well  understood,  cannot  solve 
them.  See  especially  lectures  6  and  8. 


LECTTJKE    IY. 


GOD   THE  PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES. 


Object  of  the  lecture:  What  is  the  ultimate  basis  of  absolute  truth? — 
Four  hypotheses:  Absolute  truth  may  reside  either  in  us,  in  particular 
beings  and  the  world,  in  itself,  or  in  God.  1.  We  perceive  absolute  truth, 
we  do  not  constitute  it.  2.  Particular  beings  participate  in  absolute  truth, 
but  do  not  explain  it ;  refutation  of  Aristotle.  3.  Truth  does  not  exist  in 
itself;  defence  of  Plato.  4.  Truth  resides  in  God. — Plato;  St.  Augustine ; 
Descartes ;  Malebranche ;  Feue'lon ;  Bossuet ;  Leibnitz. — Truth  the  medi- 
ator between  God  and  man. — Essential  distinctions. 


WE  have  justified  the  principles  that  govern  our  intelligence ; 
we  have  become  confident  that  there  is  truth  outside  of  us,  that 
there  are  verities  worthy  of  that  name,  which  we  can  perceive, 
which  we  do  not  make,  which  are  not  solely  conceptions  of  our 
mind,  which  would  still  exist  although  our  mind  should  not  per- 
ceive them.  Now  this  other  problem  naturally  presents  itself: 
What,  then,  in  themselves,  are  these  universal  and  necessary 
truths  ?  where  do  they  reside  ?  whence  do  they  come  ?  We  do 
not  raise  this  problem,  and  the  problems  that  it  embraces ;  the 
human  mind  itself  proposes  them,  and  it  is  fully  satisfied  only 
when  it  has  resolved  them,  and  when  it  has  reached  the  extreme 
limit  of  knowledge  that  it  is  within  its  power  to  attain. 

It  is  certain  that  the  principles  which,  in  all  the  orders  of 
knowledge,  discover  to  us  absolute  and  necessary  truths,  consti- 
tute part  of  our  reason,  which  surely  makes  its  dwelling  in  us, 
and  is  intimately  connected  with  personality  in  the  depths  of  in- 
tellectual life.  It  follows  that  the  truth,  which  reason  reveals  to 
us,  falls  thereby  into  close  relation  with  the  subject  that  perceives 
it,  and  seems  only  a  conception  of  our  mind.  Nevertheless,  as 


76  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

we  have  proved,  we  perceive  truth,  we  are  not  the  authors  of  it. 
If  the  person  that  I  am,  if  the  individual  me  does  not,  per- 
haps, explain  the  whole  of  reason,  how  could  it  explain  truth, 
and  absolute  truth  ?  Man,  limited  and  passing  away,  perceives 
necessary,  eternal,  infinite  truth  ;  that  is  for  him  a  privilege  suffi- 
ciently high ;  but  he  is  neither  the  principle  that  sustains  truth, 
nor  the  principle  that  gives  it  being.  Man  may  say,  My  reason ; 
but  give  him  credit  for  never  having  dared  to  say,  My  truth. 

If  absolute  truths  are  beyond  man  who  perceives  them,  once 
more,  where  are  they,  then?  A  peripatetic  would  respond — 
In  nature.  Is  it,  in  fact,  necessary  to  seek  for  them  any  other 
subject  than  the  beings  themselves  which  they  govern  ?  What 
are  the  laws  of  nature,  except  certain  properties  which  our  mind 
disengages  from  the  beings  and  phenomena  in  which  they  are 
met,  in  order  to  consider  them  apart  ?  Mathematical  principles 
are  nothing  more.  For  example,  the  axiom  thus  expressed — The 
whole  is  greater  than  any  of  its  parts,  is  true  of  any  whole  and 
part  whatever.  The  principle  of  contradiction,  considered  in  its 
logical  title,  as  the  condition  of  all  our  judgments,  of  all  our  rea- 
sonings, constitutes  a  part  of  the  essence  of  all  being,  and  no 
being  can  exist  without  containing  it.  The  universal  exists,  says 
Aristotle,  but  it  does  not  exist  apart  from  particular  beings.1 

This  theory  which  considers  universals  as  having  their  basis  in 
things,  is  a  progress  towards  the  pure  conceptualism  which  we 
have  in  the  beginning  indicated  and  shunned.  Aristotle  is  much 
more  of  a  realist  than  Abelard  and  Kant.  He  is  quite  right  in 
maintaining  that  universals  are  in  particular  things,  for  particular 
things  could  not  be  without  universals ;  universals  give  to  them 
their  fixity,  even  for  a  day,  and  their  unity.  But  from  the  fact 
that  universals  are  in  particular  beings,  is  it  necessary  to  conclude 
that  they,  wholly  and  exclusively,  reside  there,  and  that  they 


1  See  our  work  entitled,  Metaphysics  of  Aristotle,  2d  edition,  passim.  In 
Aristotle  himself,  see  especially  Metaphysics,  book  vii.,  chap,  xii.,  and  book 
xiii.,  chap.  ix. 


GOD   THE    PRINCIPLE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  77 

have  no  other  reality  than  that  of  the  objects  to  which  they  are 
applied  ?  It  is  the  same  with  principles  of  which  universals  are 
the  constitutive  elements.  It  is,  it  is  true,  in  the  particular  fact, 
of  a  particular  cause  producing  a  particular  event,  that  is  given 
us  the  universal  principle  of  causality ;  but  this  principle  is  much 
more  extensive  than  the  facts,  for  it  is  applied,  not  only  to  this 
fact,  but  to  a  thousand  others.  The  particular  fact  contains  the 
principle,  but  it  does  not  wholly  contain  it,  and,  far  from  giving 
the  basis  of  the  principle,  it  is  based  upon  it.  As  much  may  be 
said  of  other  principles. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  replied  that,  if  a  principle  is  certainly  more 
extensive  than  such  a  fact,  or  such  a  being,  it  is  not  more  exten- 
sive than  all  facts  and  all  beings,  and  that  nature,  considered  as  a 
whole,  can  explain  that  which  each  particular  being  does  not 
explain.  But  nature,  in  its  totality,  is  still  only  a  finite  and 
contingent  thing,  whilst  the  principles  to  be  explained  have  a 
necessary  and  infinite  bearing.  The  idea  of  the  infinite  can  come 
neither  from  any  particular  being,  nor  from  the  whole  of  beings. 
Entire  nature  will  not  furnish  us  the  idea  of  perfection,  for  all 
the  beings  of  nature  are  imperfect.  Absolute  principles  govern, 
then,  all  facts  and  all  beings,  they  do  not  spring  from  them. 

Will  it  be  necessary  to  come  to  the  opinion,  then,  that  absolute 
truths,  being  explicable  neither  by  humanity  nor  by  nature,  sub- 
sist by  themselves,  and  are  to  themselves  their  own  foundation 
and  their  own  subject  ? 

But  this  opinion  contains  still  more  absurdities  than  the  prece- 
ding; for,  I  ask,  what  are  truths,  absolute  or  contingent,  that 
exist  by  themselves,  out  of  things  in  which  they  are  found,  and 
out  of  the  intelligence  that  conceives  them  ?  Truth  is,  then,  only 
a  realized  abstraction.  There  are  no  quintessential  metaphysics 
which  can  prevail  against  good  sense  ;  and  if  such  is  the  Platonic 
theory  of  ideas,  Aristotle  is  right  in  his  opposition  to  it.  But  such 
a  theory  is  only  a  chimera  that  Aristotle  created  for  the  pleasure 
of  combating  it. 

Let  us  hasten  to  remove  absolute  truths  from  this  ambiguous 


78  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

and  equivocal  state.  And  how  ?  By  applying  to  them  a  prin- 
ciple which  should  now  be  familiar  to  you.  Yes,  truth  necessarily 
appeals  to  something  beyond  itself.  As  every  phenomenon  has 
its  subject  of  inherence,  as  our  faculties,  our  thoughts,  our  voli- 
tions, our  sensations,  exist  only  in  a  being  which  is  ourselves,  so 
truth  supposes  a  being  in  which  it  resides,  and  absolute  truths  sup- 
pose a  being  absolute  as  themselves,  wherein  they  have  their  final 
foundation.  We  come  thus  to  something  absolute,  which  is  no 
longer  suspended  in  the  vagueness  of  abstraction,  but  is  a  being 
substantially  existing.  This  being,  absolute  and  necessary,  since 
it  is  the  subject  of  necessary  and  absolute  truths,  this  being  which 
is  at  the  foundation  of  truth  as  its  very  essence,  in  a  single  word, 
is  called  God.1 

This  theory,  which  conducts  from  absolute  truth  to  absolute 
being,  is  not  new  in  the  history  of  philosophy :  it  goes  back  to 
Plato. 

Plato,*  in  searching  for  the  principles  of  knowledge  clearly  saw, 
with  Socrates  his  master,  that  the  least  definition,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  precise  knowledge,  supposes  something  universal 
and  one,  which  does  not  come  within  the  reach  of  the  senses, 
which  reason  alone  can  discover ;  this  something  universal  and 
one  he  called  Idea. 

Ideas,  which  possess  universality  and  unity,  do  not  come  from 
material,  changing,  and  mobile  things,  to  which  they  are  applied, 
and  which  render  them  intelligible.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not 


1  There  are  doubtless  many  other  ways  of  arriving  at  God,  as  we  shall  suc- 
cessively see ;  but  this  is  the  way  of  metaphysics.  We  do  not  exclude  any 
of  the  known  and  accredited  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God;  but  we  begin 
with  that  which  gives  all  the  others .  See  further  on,  part  ii.,  God,  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Beauty,  and  part  iii.,  God,  the  Principle  of  the  Good,  and  the  last 
lecture,  which  sums  up  the  whole  course. 

*  "We  have  said  a  word  on  the  Platonic  theory  of  ideas,  1st  Series,  vol.  iv., 
p.  461  and  522.  See  also,  vol.  ii.  of  the  2d  Series,  lecture  7,  on  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  especially  3d  Series,  vol.  i.,  a  few  words  on  the  language  of  the 
Theory  of  Ideas,  p.  121 ;  our  work  on  the  Metaphysics  of  Aristotle,  p.  48  and 
149,  and  onr  translation  of  Plato,  passim. 


GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES.  79 

the  human  mind  that  constitutes  ideas ;  for  man  is  not  the  meas- 
ure of  truth. 

Plato  calls  Ideas  veritable  beings,  TO,  ovrug  O'VTCC,  since  they 
alone  communicate  to  sensible  things  and  to  human  cognitions 
their  truth  and  their  unity.  But  does  it  follow  that  Plato  gives 
to  Ideas  a  substantial  existence,  that  he  makes  of  them  beings 
properly  so  called?  It  is  important  that  no  cloud  should  be  left 
on  this  fundamental  point  of  the  Platonic  theory. 

At  first,  if  any  one  should  pretend  that  in  Plato  Ideas  are  be- 
ings subsisting  by  themselves,  without  interconnection  and  without 
relation  to  a  common  centre,  numerous  passages  of  the  Timaeus 
might  be  objected  to  him,1  in  which  Plato  speaks  of  Ideas  as 
forming  in  their  whole  an  ideal  unity,  which  is  the  reason  of  the 
unity  of  the  visible  world.* 

"Will  it  be  said  that  this  ideal  world  forms  a  distinct  unity,  a 
unity  separate  from  God  ?  But,  in  order  to  sustain  this  assertion, 
it  is  necessary  to  forget  so  many  passages  of  the  Republic,  in 
which  the  relations  of  truth  and  science  with  the  Good,  that  is 
to  say,  with  God,  are  marked  in  brilliant  characters. 

Let  not  that  magnificent  comparison  be  forgotten,  in  which,  after 
having  said  that  the  sun  produces  in  the  physical  world  light  and 
life,  Socrates  adds :  "  So  thou  art  able  to  say,  intelligible  beings 
not  only  hold  from  the  Good  that  which  renders  them  intelligi- 
ble, but  also  their  being  and  their  essence." 3  So,  intelligible  be- 
ings, that  is  to  say,  Ideas,  are  not  beings  that  exist  by  themselves. 

Men  go  on  repeating  with  assurance  that  the  Good,  in  Plato, 
is  only  the  idea  of  the  good,  and  that  an  idea  is  not  God.  I 
reply,  that  the  Good  is  in  fact  an  idea,  according  to  Plato,  but 
that  the  idea  here  is  not  a  pure  conception  of  the  mind,  an  object 
of  thought,  as  the  peripatetic  school  understood  it ;  I  add,  that 

1  Aristotle  first  stated  this ;  modern  peripatetics  have  repeated  it ;  and 
after  them,  all  who  have  wished  to  decry  the  ancient  philosophy,  and  phi- 
losophy in  general,  by  giving  the  appearance  of  absurdity  to  its  most  illus- 
trious representative. 

a  See  particularly  p.  121  of  the  Timaeus,  vol.  xii.  of  our  translation. 

3  Republic,  book  vi.,  vol.  x.  of  our  translation,  p.  57. 


80  LECTURE    FOURTH. 

the  Idea  of  the  Good  is  in  Plato  the  first  of  Ideas,  and  that,  for 
this  reason,  while  remaining  for  us  an  object  of  thought,  it  is 
confounded  as  to  existence  with  God.  If  the  Idea  of  the  Good 
is  not  God  himself,  how  will  the  following  passage,  also  taken 
from  the  Republic,  be  explained  ?  "  At  the  extreme  limits  of  the 
intellectual  world  is  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  which  is  perceived 
with  difficulty,  but,  in  fine,  cannot  be  perceived  without  con- 
cluding that  it  is  the  source  of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  good ; 
that  in  the  visible  world  it  produces  light,  and  the  star  whence 
the  light  directly  comes,  that  in  the  invisible  world  it  directly 
produces  truth  and  intelligence."1  Who  can  produce,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  sun  and  light,  on  the  other,  truth  and  intelligence, 
except  a  real  being  ? 

But  all  doubt  disappears  before  the  following  passages  from 
the  Phcedrus,  neglected,  as  it  would  seem  designedly,  by  the  de- 
tractors of  Plato :  "  In  this  transition,  (the  soul)  contemplates 
justice,  contemplates  wisdom,  contemplates  science,  not  that 
wherein  enters  change,  nor  that  which  shows  itself  different  in 
the  different  objects  which  we  are  pleased  to  call  beings,  but 
science  as  it  exists  in  that  which  is  called  being,  par  excellence. 

" 2 — "  It  belongs  to  the  soul  to  conceive  the  universal,  that 

is  to  say,  that  which,  in  the  diversity  of  sensations,  can  be  com- 
prehended under  a  rational  unity.  This  is  the  remembrance  of 
what  the  soul  has  seen  during  its  journey  in  the  train  of  Deity, 
when,  disdaining  what  we  improperly  call  beings,  it  looked  up- 
wards to  the  only  true  being.  So  it  is  just  that  the  thought  of 
the  philosopher  should  alone  have  wings ;  for  its  remembrance  is 
always  as  much  as  possible  with  the  things  which  make  God  a 
true  God,  inasmuch  as  he  is  with  them." 3 

So  the  objects  of  the  philosopher's  contemplation,  that  is  to  say, 
Ideas,  are  in  God,  and  it  is  by  these,  by  his  essential  union  with 
these,  that  God  is  the  true  God,  the  God  who,  as  Plato  admirably 
says  in  the  Sophist,  participates  in  august  and  holy  intelligence* 

1  BepuUic,  book  vii.,  p.  20  2  Phcedrus,  vol.  vi.,  p.  51. 

8  Phcedrus,  vol.  vi.,  p.  55.  «  Vol.  xi.,  p.  261. 


GOD   THE    PRINCIPLE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  81 

It  is  therefore  certain,  that,  in  the  true  Platonic  theory,  Ideas 
are  not  beings  in  the  vulgar  sense  of  the  word,  beings  which 
would  be  neither  in  the  mind  of  man,  nor  in  nature,  nor  in 
God,  and  would  subsist  only  by  themselves.  No,  Plato  con- 
siders Ideas  as  being  at  once  the  principles  of  sensible  things, 
of  which  they  are  the  laws,  and  the  principles  also  of  human 
knowledge,  which  owes  to  them  its  light,  its  rule,  and  its 
end,  and  the  essential  attributes  of  God,  that  is  to  say,  God 
himself. 

Plato  is  truly  the  father  of  the  doctrine  which  we  have  ex- 
plained, and  the  great  philosophers  who  have  attached  themselves 
to  his  school  have  always  professed  this  same  doctrine. 

The  founder  of  Christian  metaphysics,  St.  Augustine,  is  a  de- 
clared disciple  of  Plato  :  everywhere  he  speaks,  like  Plato,  of  the 
relation  of  human  reason  to  the  divine  reason,  and  of  truth  to 
God.  In  the  City  of  God,  book  x.,  chap,  ii.,  and  in  chap.  ix.  of 
book  vii.  of  the  Confessions,  he  goes  to  the  extent  of  comparing 
the  Platonic  doctrine  with  that  of  St.  John. 

He  adopts,  without  reserve,  the  theory  of  Ideas.  Book  of 
Eighty-three  Questions,  question  46  :  "  Ideas  are  the  primordial 
forms,  and,  as  it  were,  the  immutable  reasons  of  things  ;  they  are 
not  created,  they  are  eternal,  and  always  the  same  :  they  are  con- 
tained in  the  divine  intelligence ;  and  without  being  subject  to 
birth  and  death,  they  are  the  types  according  to  which  is  formed 
every  thing  that  is  born  and  dies."  r 

"  What  man,  pious,  and  penetrated  with  true  religion,  would 
dare  to  deny  that  all  things  that  exist,  that  is  to  say,  all  things 
that,  each  of  its  kind,  possess  a  determinate  nature,  have  been 
created  by  God  ?  This  point  being  once  conceded,  can  it  be  said 
that  God  has  created  things  without  reason  ?  If  it  is  impossible 
to  say  or  think  this,  it  follows  that  all  things  have  been  created 

'Edit.  Benecl.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  17:  Idex  sunt  forma  qucedam  principals  tf 
rati&nes  rerum  stabiles  atque  incommutabiles,  quce  ipsce,  formats  non  sunt  <!<• 
per  ~hoc  sterna,  ac  semper  eodem  modo  sese  Twbentes,  quae  in  divina  intetUgentia 
eontinentur  .... 

4* 


82  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

with  reason.  But  the  reason  of  the  existence  of  a  man  cannot 
•be  the  same  as  the  reason  of  the  existence  of  a  horse;  that 
is  absurd;  each  thing  has  therefore  been  created  by  virtue  of 
a  reason  that  is  peculiar  to  it.  Now,  where  can  these  reasons 
be,  except  in  the  mind  of  the  Creator?  For  he  saw  nothing 
out  of  himself,  which  he  could  use  as  a  model  for  creating 
what  he  created  :  such  an  opinion  would  be  sacrilege.1 

"  If  the  reasons  of  things  to  be  created  and  things  created  are 
contained  in  the  divine  intelligence,  and  if  there  is  nothing  in  the 
divine  intelligence  but  the  eternal  and  immutable,  the  reasons  of 
things  which  Plato  calls  Ideas,  are  the  eternal  and  immutable 
truths,  by  the  participation  in  which  every  thing  that  is  is  such 
as  it  is."  2 

St.  Thomas  himself,  who  scarcely  knew  Plato,  and  who  was 
often  enough  held  by  Aristotle  in  a  kind  of  empiricism,  carried 
away  by  Christianity  and  St.  Augustine,  let  the  sentiment  escape 
him,  "  that  our  natural  reason  is  a  sort  of  participation  in  the 
divine  reason,  that  to  this  we  owe  our  knowledge  and  our 
judgments,  that  this  is  the  reason  why  it  is  said,  that  we  see 
every  thing  in  God."3  There  are  in  St  Thomas  many  other 
similar  passages,  of  perhaps  an  expressive  Platonism,  which  is 
not  the  Platonism  of  Plato,  but  of  the  Alexandrians. 

The  Cartesian  philosophy,  in  spite  of  its  profound  originality, 
and  its  wholly  French  character,  is  full  of  the  Platonic  spirit. 
Descartes  has  no  thought  of  Plato,  whom  apparently  he  has  never 
read ;  in  nothing  does  he  imitate  or  resemble  him  :  nevertheless, 

1  Edit.  Bened.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  18.  Singula  igitur  propriis  creata  sunt  rationi- 
bus.  Has  autem  rationes  itbi  arbitrandum  est  esse  nisi  in  mente  Creatoris  ? 
non  enim  extra  se  quidquam  intuebatur,  ut  secundum  id  constitueret  quod  con- 
etituebat:  nam  hoc  opinari  sacrilegum  est. 

*Ibid.  See  also,  book  of  the  Confessions,  book  ii.  of  the  Free  Witt,  book 
xii.  of  the  Trinity,  book  vii.  of  the  City  of  God,  &c. 

*  Summa  totius  theologian.  Primse  partis  qusest.  xii.  art.  11.  Ad  tertium 
dicendum,  quod  omnia  dicimus  in  Deo  videre,  et  secundum  i<psum  de  omnibus 
judicare,  in  quantum  per  participationem  sui  luminis  omnia  cognoscimus  et 
di/judicamus.  Nam  et  ipsum  lumen  naturale  rutionis  participatlo  qucedam  est 
divini  luminis 


GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE    OF   PRINCIPLES.  83 

from  the  first,  he  is  met  in  the  same  regions  with  Plato,  whither 
he  goes  by  a  different  route. 

The  notion  of  the  infinite  and  the  perfect  is  for  Descartes  what 
the  universal,  the  Idea,  is  for  Plato.  No  sooner  has  Descartes 
found  by  consciousness  that  he  thinks,  than  he  concludes  from 
this  that  he  exists,  then,  in  course,  by  consciousness  still,  he  recog- 
nizes himself  as  imperfect,  full  of  defects,  limitations,  miseries, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  conceives  something  infinite  and  perfect. 
He  possesses  the  idea  of  the  infinite  and  the  perfect ;  but  this 
idea  is  not  his  own  work,  for  he  is  imperfect ;  it  must  then  have 
been  put  into  him  by  another  being  endowed  with  perfection, 
whom  he  conceives,  whom  he  does  not  possess : — that  being  is 
God.  Such  is  the  process  by  which  Descartes,  setting  out  from 
his  own  thought,  and  his  own  being,  elevated  himself  to  God. 
This  process,  so  simple,  which  he  so  simply  exposes  in  the  Dis- 
cours  de  la  Methode,  he  will  put  successively,  in  the  Meditations, 
in  the  Responses  aux  Objections,  in  the  Principes,  under  the  most 
diverse  forms,  he  will  accommodate  it,  if  it  is  necessary,  to  the 
language  of  the  schools,  in  order  that  it  may  penetrate  into  them. 
After  all,  this  process  is  compelled  to  conclude,  from  the  idea  of 
the  infinite  and  the  perfect,  in  the  existence  of  a  cause  of  this  idea, 
adequate,  at  least,  to  the  idea  itself,  that  is  to  say,  infinite  and 
perfect.  One  sees  that  the  first  difference  between  Plato  and 
Descartes  is,  that  the  ideas  which  in  Plato  are  at  once  conceptions 
of  our  mind,  and  the  principles  of  things,  are  for  Descartes,  as 
well  as  for  all  modem  philosophy,  only  our  conceptions,  amongst 
which  that  of  the  infinite  and  perfect  occupies  the  first  place ;  the 
second  difference  is,  that  Plato  goes  from  ideas  to  God  by  the 
principle  of  substances,  if  we  may  be  allowed  to  use  this  techni- 
cal language  of  modern  philosophy ;  whilst  Descartes  employs 
rather  the  principle  of  causality,  and  concludes — well  understood 
without  syllogism — from  the  idea  of  the  infinite  and  the  perfect 
in  a  cause  also  perfect  and  infinite.1  But  under  these  differences, 

1  On  the  doctrine  of  Descartes,  and  on  the  proof  of  the  existence  of  God 


84:  LECTURE    FOUETH. 

and  in  spite  of  many  more,  is  a  common  basis,  a  genius  the  same, 
which  at  first  elevates  us  above  the  senses,  and,  by  the  interme- 
diary of  marvellous  ideas  that  are  incontestably  in  us,  bears  us 
towards  him  who  alone  can  be  their  substance,  who  is  the  infinite 
and  perfect  author  of  our  idea  of  infinity  and  perfection.  For 
this  reason,  Descartes  belongs  to  the  family  of  Plato  and  Socrates. 

The  idea  of  the  perfect  and  the  finite  being  once  introduced 
into  the  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  it  becomes  there 
for  the  successors  of  Descartes  what  the  theory  of  ideas  became 
for  the  successors  of  Plato. 

Among  the  French  writers,  Malebranche,  perhaps,  reminds  us 
with  the  least  disadvantage,  although  very  imperfectly  still,  of 
the  manner  of  Plato :  he  sometimes  expresses  its  elevation  and 
grace  ;  but  he  is  far  from  possessing  the  Socratic  good  sense,  and, 
it  must  be  confessed,  no  one  has  clouded  more  the  theory  of  ideas 
by  exaggerations  of  every  kind  which  he  has  mingled  with  them.2 
Instead  of  establishing  that  there  is  in  the  human  reason,  wholly 
personal  as  it  is  by  its  intimate  relation  with  our  other  faculties, 
something  also  which  is  not  personal,  something  universal  which 
permits  it  to  elevate  itself  to  universal  truths,  Malebranche  does 
not  hesitate  to  absolutely  confound  the  reason  that  is  in  us  with 
the  divine  reason  itself.  Moreover,  according  to  Malebranche,  we 
do  not  directly  know  particular  things,  sensible  objects  ;  we  know 
them  only  by  ideas ;  it  is  the  intelligible  extension  and  not  the 
material  extension  that  we  immediately  perceive ;  in  vision  the 


and  the  true  process  that  he  employs,  see  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  12,  p. 
64,  lecture  22,  p.  509 — 518  ;  vol.  v.,  lecture  6,  p.  205 ;  2d  Series,  vol.  xi.,  lec- 
ture 11 ;  especially  the  three  articles,  already  cited,  of  the  Journal  des  &tr- 
vants  for  the  year  1850. 

8  See  on  Malebranche,  2d  Series,  lecture  2,  and  3d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  Modern 
Philosophy,  as  well  as  the  Fragments  of  Cartesian  Philosophy  ;  preface  of  the 
1st  edition  of  our  Pascal: — "On  this  basis,  so  pure,  Malebranche  is  not 
steady;  is  excessive  and  rash,  I  know;  narrow  and  extreme,  I  do  not  fear 
to  say ;  but  always  sublime,  expressing  only  one  side  of  Plato,  but  expressing 
it  in  a  wholly  Christian  spirit  and  in  angelic  language.  Malebranche  is  a 
Descartes  who  strays,  having  found  divine  wings,  and  lost  all  connectiou 
with  the  earth." 


GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES.  85 

proper  object  of  the  mind  is  the  universal,  the  idea ;  and  as  the 
idea  is  in  God,  it  is  in  God  that  we  see  all  things.  We  can 
understand  how  well-formed  minds  must  have  been  shocked  by 
such  a  theory ;  but  it  is  not  just  to  confound  Plato  with  his  bril- 
liant and  unfaithful  disciple.  In  Plato,  sensibility  directly  attains 
sensible  things ;  it  makes  them  known  to  us  as  they  are,  that  is 
to  say,  as  very  imperfect  and  undergoing  perpetual  change,  which 
renders  the  knowledge  that  we  have  of  them  almost  unworthy  of 
the  name  of  knowledge.  It  is  reason,  different  in  us  from  sensi- 
bility, which,  above  sensible  objects,  discovers  to  us  the  universal, 
the  idea,  and  gives  a  knowledge  solid  and  durable.  Having  once 
attained  ideas,  we  have  reached  God  himself,  in  whom  they  have 
their  foundation,  who  finishes  and  consummates  true  knowledge. 
But  we  have  no  need  of  God,  nor  of  ideas,  in  order  to  perceive 
sensible  objects,  which  are  defective  and  changing ;  for  this  our 
senses  are  sufficient.  Reason  is  distinct  from  the  senses ;  it  tran- 
scends the  imperfect  knowledge  of  what  they  are  capable;  it 
attains  the  universal,  because  it  possesses  something  universal 
itself;  it  participates  in  the  divine  reason,  but  it  is  not  the  divine 
reason ;  it  is  enlightened  by  it,  it  comes  from  it, — it  is  not  it. 

Fenelon  is  inspired  at  once  by  Malebranche  and  Descartes  in 
the  treatise,  de  V Existence  de  Dieu.  The  second  part  is  entirely 
Cartesian  in  method,  in  the  order  and  sequence  of  the  proofs. 
Nevertheless,  Malebranche  also  appears  there,  especially  in  the 
fourth  chapter,  on  the  nature  of  ideas,  and  he  predominates  in  all 
the  metaphysical  portions  of  the  first  part.  After  the  explana- 
tions which  we  have  given,  it  will  not  be  difficult  for  you  to 
discern  what  is  true  and  what  is  at  times  excessive  in  the  passages 
which  follow  :* 

Part  i.,  chap.  Hi.  "  Oh  !  how  great  is  the  mind  of  man  !  It 
bears  in  itself  what  astonishes  itself  and  infinitely  surpasses  itself. 
Its  ideas  are  universal,  eternal,  and  immutable.  .  .  .  The  idea  of 

1  "We  use  the  only  good  edition  of  the  treatise  on  the  Existence  of  God, 
that  which  the  Abbe  Gosselin  has  given  in  the  collection  of  the  Works  of 
Fenelon.  Versailles,  1820.  See  vol.  i.,  p.  80. 


86  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

the  infinite  is  in  me  as  well  as  that  of  lines,  numbers,  and  circles. 
.  .  .  — Chap.  liv.  Besides  this  idea  of  the  infinite,  I  have  also 
universal  and  immutable  notions,  which  are  the  rule  of  all  my 
judgments.  I  can  judge  of  nothing  except  by  consulting  them, 
and  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  judge  against  what  they  represent 
to  me.  My  thoughts,  far  from  being  able  to  correct  this  rule,  are 
themselves  corrected  in  spite  of  me  by  this  superior  rule,  and  they 
are  irresistibly  adjusted  to  its  decision.  Whatever  effort  of  mind 
I  may  make,  I  can  never  succeed  in  doubting  that  two  and  two 
are  four ;  that  the  whole  is  not  greater  than  any  of  its  parts ; 
that  the  centre  of  a  perfect  circle  is  not  equidistant  from  all  points 
of  the  circumference.  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  deny  these  proposi- 
tions ;  and  if  I  deny  these  truths,  or  others  similar  to  them,  I 
have  in  me  something  that  is  above  me,  that  forces  me  to  the 
conclusion.  This  fixed  and  immutable  rule  is  so  internal  and  so 
intimate  that  I  am  inclined  to  take  it  for  myself;  but  it  is  above 
me  since  it  corrects  me,  redresses  me,  and  puts  me  in  defiance 
against  myself,  and  reminds  me  of  my  impotence.  It  is  some- 
thing that  suddenly  inspires  me,  provided  I  listen  to  it,  and  I  am 
never  deceived  except  in  not  listening  to  it.  ...  This  internal 
rule  is  what  I  call  my  reason.  .  .  .  — Chap.  Iv.  In  truth  my 
reason  is  in  me ;  for  I  must  continually  enter  into  myself  in  order 
to  find  it.  But  the  higher  reason  which  corrects  me  when  neces- 
sary, which  I  consult,  exists  not  by  me,  and  makes  no  part  of  me. 
This  rule  is  perfect  and  immutable ;  I  am  changing  and  imper- 
fect. When  I  am  deceived,  it  does  not  lose  its  integrity.  When 
I  am  undeceived,  it  is  not  this  that  returns  to  its  end  :  it  is  this 
which,  without  ever  having  deviated,  has  the  authority  over  me 
to  remind  me  of  my  error,  and  to  make  me  return.  It  is  a  mas- 
ter within,  which  makes  me  keep  silent,  which  makes  me  speak, 
which  makes  me  believe,  which  makes  me  doubt,  which  makes 
me  acknowledge  my  errors  or  confirm  my  judgments.  Listening 
to  it,  I  am  instructed  ;  listening  to  myself,  I  err.  This  master  is 
everywhere,  and  its  voice  makes  itself  heard,  from  end  to  end  of 
the  universe,  in  all  men  as  well  as  in  me.  .  .  .  — Chap.  Ivi.  .  .  , 


GOD    THE    PRINCIPLE    OF    PRINCIPLES.  87 

That  which  appears  the  most  in  us  and  seems  to  be  the  founda- 
tion of  ourselves,  I  mean  our  reason,  is  that  which  is  least  of  all 
our  own,  which  we  are  constrained  to  believe  to  be  especially 
borrowed.  We  receive  without  cessation,  and  at  all  moments,  a 
reason  superior  to  us,  as  we  breathe  without  cessation  the  air, 
which  is  a  foreign  body.  .  .  .  — Chap.  Ivii.  The  internal  and 
universal  master  always  and  everywhere  speaks  the  same  truths. 
We  are  not  this  master.  It  is  true  that  we  often  speak  without 
it,  and  more  loftily  than  it.  But  we  are  then  deceived,  we  are 
stammering,  we  do  not  understand  ourselves.  We  even  fear  to 
see  that  we  are  deceived,  and  we  close  the  ear  through  fear  of 
being  humiliated  by  its  corrections.  Without  doubt,  man,  who 
fears  being  corrected  by  this  incorruptible  reason,  who  always 
wanders  in  not  following  it,  is  not  that  perfect,  universal,  immu- 
table reason  which  corrects  him  in  spite  of  himself.  In  all  things 
we  find,  as  it  were,  two  principles  within  us.  One, gives,  the 
other  receives ;  one  wants,  the  other  supplies ;  one  is  deceived,  the 
other  corrects ;  one  goes  wrong  by  its  own  inclination,  the  other 
rectifies  it.  ...  Each  one  feels  within  himself  a  limited  and  sub- 
altern reason,  which  wanders  when  it  escapes  a  complete  subordi- 
nation, which  is  corrected  only  by  returning  to  the  yoke  of 
another  superior,  universal,  and  immutable  power.  So  every 
thing  in  us  bears  the  mark  of  a  subaltern,  limited,  partial,  bor- 
rowed reason,  which  needs  another  to  correct  it  at  every  moment. 
All  men  are  rational,  because  they  possess  the  same  reason  which 
is  communicated  to  them  in  different  degrees.  There  is  a  certain 
number  of  wise  men ;  but  the  wisdom  which  they  receive,  as  it 
were,  from  the  fountain-head,  which  makes  them  what  they  are, 

is  one  and  the  same — Chap.  Iviii.  Where  is  this  wisdom  ? 

Where  is  this  reason,  which  is  both  common  and  superior  to  all 
the  limited  and  imperfect  reasons  of  the  human  race  ?  Where, 
then,  is  this  oracle  which  is  never  silent,  against  which  the  vain 
prejudices  of  peoples  are  always  impotent  ?  Where  is  this  reason 
which  we  ever  need  to  consult,  which  comes  to  us  to  inspire  us 
with  the  desire  of  listening  to  its  voice  ?  Where  is  this  light 


00  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

that  lighteneth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world?  .  ..  .  The 
substance  of  the  human  eye  is  not  light ;  on  the  contrary,  the  eye 
borrows  at  each  moment  the  light  of  the  sun's  rays.  So  my  mind 
is  not  the  primitive  reason,  the  universal  and  immutable  truth,  it 
is  only  the  medium  that  conducts  this  original  light,  that  is  illu- 
minated by  it — Chap.  Ix.  I  find  two  reasons  in  myself, 

— one  is  myself,  the  other  is  above  me.  That  which  is  in  me  is 
very  imperfect,  faulty,  uncertain,  preoccupied,  precipitate,  subject 
to  aberration,  changing,  conceited,  ignorant,  and  limited ;  in  fine, 
it  possesses  nothing  but  what  it  borrows.  The  other  is  common  to 
all  men,  and  is  superior  to  all ;  it  is  perfect,  eternal,  immutable, 
always  ready  to  communicate  itself  in  all  places,  and  to  rectify  all 
minds  that  are  deceived,  in  fine,  incapable  of  ever  being  exhausted 
or  divided,  although  it  gives  itself  to  those  who  desire  it.  Where 
is  this  perfect  reason,  that  is  so  near  me  and  so  different  from 
me  ?  Where  is  it  ?  It  must  be  something  real.  .  .  .  Where  is 
this  supreme  reason  ?  Is  it  not  God  that  I  am  seeking  ?" 

Part  ii.,  chap,  i.,  sect.  28.1     "  I  have  in  me  the  idea  of  the  infi- 
nite and  of  infinite  perfection Give  me  a  finite  thing  as 

great  as  you  please — let  it  quite  transcend  the  reach  of  my  senses, 
so  that  it  becomes,  as  it  were,  infinite  to  my  imagination ;  it 
always  remains  finite  in  my  mind ;  I  conceive  a  limit  to  it,  even 
when  I  cannot  imagine  it.  I  am  not  able  to  mark  the  limit ;  but 

1  know  that  it  exists;  and  far  from  confounding  it  with  the  infi- 
nite, I  conceive  it  as  infinitely  distant  from  the  idea  that  I  have 
of  the  veritable  infinite.     If  one  speaks  to  me  of  the  indefinite  as 
a  mean  between  the  two  extremes  of  the  infinite  and  the  limited, 
I  reply,  that  it  signifies  nothing,  that,  at  least,  it  only  signifies 
something  truly  finite,  whose  boundaries  escape  the  imagination 
without  escaping  the  mind.   .   .   .  Sect.  29.    Where  have  I  ob- 
tained .this  idea,  which  is  so  much  above  me,  which  infinitely 
surpasses  me,  which  astonishes  me,  which  makes  me  disappear  in 
my  own  eyes,  which  renders  the  infinite  present  to  me  ?     Whence 

1  Edit,  de  Versailles,  p.  145. 


GOD  THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES.  89 

does  it  come  ?  Where  have  I  obtained  it  ?  ...  Once  more, 
whence  comes  this  marvellous  representation  of  the  infinite,  which 
pertains  to  the  infinite  itself,  which  resembles  nothing  finite  ?  It 
is  in  me,  it  is  more  than  myself;  it  seems  to  me  every  thing,  and 
myself  nothing.  I  can  neither  efface,  obscure,  diminish,  nor  con- 
tradict it.  It  is  in  me ;  I  have  not  put  it  there,  I  have  found  it 
there ;  and  I  have  found  it  there  only  because  it  was  already 
there  before  I  sought  it.  It  remains  there  invariable,  even  when 
I  do  not  think  of  it,  when  I  think  of  something  else.  I  find  it 
whenever  I  seek  it,  and  it  often  presents  itself  when  I  am  not 
seeking  it.  It  does  not  depend  upon  me ;  I  depend  upon  it.  ... 
Moreover,  who  has  made  this  infinite  representation  of  the  infinite, 
so  as  to  give  it  to  me  ?  Has  it  made  itself  ?  Has  the  infinite 
image1  of  the  infinite  had  no  original,  according  to  which  it  has 
been  made,  no  real  cause  that  has  produced  it  ?  Where  are  we 
in  relation  to  it  ?  And  what  a  mass  of  extravagances !  It  is, 
therefore,  absolutely  necessary  to  conclude  that  it  is  the  infinitely 
perfect  being  that  renders  himself  immediately  present  to  me, 
when  I  conceive  him,  and  that  he  himself  is  the  idea  which  I 
have  of  him.  .  .  ." 

Chap,  iv.,  sect.  49.  ".  .  .  My  ideas  are  myself;  for  they  are 
my  reason.  .  .  .  My  ideas,  and  the  basis  of  myself,  or  of  my 
mind,  appear  but  the  same  thing.  On  the  other  hand,  my  mind 
is  changing,  uncertain,  ignorant,  subject  to  error,  precipitate  in 
its  judgments,  accustomed  to  believe  what  it  does  not  clearly  un- 
derstand, and  to  judge  without  having  sufficiently  consulted  its 
ideas,  which  are  by  themselves  certain  and  immutable.  My 
ideas,  then,  are  not  myself,  and  I  am  not  my  ideas.  What  shall 
I  believe,  then,  they  can  be  ?  ...  What  then !  are  my  ideas 


1  It  is  not  necessary  to  remark  Low  incorrect  are  the  expressions,  represen- 
tation of  the  infinite,  image  of  the  infinite,  especially  infinite  image  of  the  infi- 
nite. We  cannot  represent  to  ourselves,  we  cannot  imagine  to  ourselves  the 
infinite.  We  conceive  the  infinite ;  the  infinite  is  not  an  object  of  the  imagi- 
nation, but  of  the  understanding,  of  reason.  See  1st  Series,  vol.  v.,  lecture 
6,  p.  223,  224. 


90  LECTURE    FOURTH. 

God  ?  They  are  superior  to  my  mind,  since  they  rectify  and 
correct  it ;  they  have  the  character  of  the  Divinity,  for  they  are 
universal  and  immutable  like  God  ;  they  really  subsist,  according 
to  a  principle  that  we  have  already  established :  nothing  exists 
so  really  as  that  which  is  universal  and  immutable.  If  that 
which  is  changing,  transitory,  and  derived,  truly  exists,  much 
more  does  that  which  cannot  change,  and  is  necessary.  It  is 
then  necessary  to  find  in  nature  something  existing  and  real,  that 
is,  my  ideas,  something  that  is  within  me,  and  is  not  myself,  that 
is  superior  to  me,  that  is  in  me  even  when  I  am  not  thinking  of 
it,  with  which  I  believe  myself  to  be  alone,  as  though  I  were 
only  with  myself,  in  fine,  that  is  more  present  to  me,  and  more 
intimate  than  my  own  foundation.  I  know  not  what  this  some- 
thing, so  admirable,  so  familiar,  so  unknown,  can  be,  except  God." 

Let  us  now  hear  the  most  solid,  the  most  authoritative  of  the 
Christian  doctors  of  the  seventeenth  century — let  us  hear  Bos- 
suet  in  his  Logic,  and  in  the  Treatise  on  the  Knowledge  of  God 
and  Self.1 

Bossuet  may  be  said  to  have  had  three  masters  in  philosophy — 
St.  Augustine,  St.  Thomas,  and  Descartes.  He  had  been  taught 
at  the  college  of  Navarre  the  doctrine  of  St.  Thomas,  that  is  to 
say,  a  modified  peripateticism ;  at  the  same  time  he  was  nour- 
ished by  the  reading  of  St.  Augustine,  and  out  of  the  schools  he 
found  spread  abroad  the  philosophy  of  Descartes.  He  adopted 
it,  and  had  no  difficulty  in  reconciling  it  with  that  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, while,  upon  more  than  one  point,  it  corroborated  the  doc- 
trine of  St.  Thomas.  Bossuet  invented  nothing  in  philosophy ; 
he  received  every  thing,  but  every  thing  united  and  purified, 
thanks  to  that  supreme  good  sense  which  in  him  is  a  quality  pre- 
dominating over  force,  grandeur,  and  eloquence.2  In  the  passages 


1  By  a  trifling  anachronism,  for  which,  we  shall  be  pardoned,  we  have  heie 
joined,  to  the  Traitede  la  Connaissan.ee  de  Dieu  et  de  Soi-meme,  so  long  known, 
the  Logique,  which  was  only  published  in  1828. 

8  4th  Series,  vol.  i.,  preface  of  the  1st  edition  of  Pascal:  "  Bossuet,  with 
more  moderation,  and  supported  by  a  good  sense  which  nothing  can  shake, 
is,  in  his  way,  a  disciple  of  the  same  doctrine,  only  the  extremes  of  which, 


GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  91 

which  I  am  about  to  exhibit  to  you,  which  I  hope  you  will  im- 
press upon  your  memories,  you  will  not  find  the  grace  of  Male- 
branche,  the  exhaustless  abundance  of  Fenelon;  you  will  find 
what  is  better  than  either,  to  wit,  clearness  and  precision — all  the 
rest  in  him  is  in  some  sort  an  addition  to  these. 

Fenelon  disengages  badly  enough  the  process  which  conducts 
from  ideas,  from  universal  and  necessary  truths,  to  God.  Bossuet 
renders  to  himself  a  strict  account  of  this  process,  and  marks  it 
with  force ;  it  is  the  principle  that  we  have  invoked,  that  which 
concludes  from  attributes  in  a  subject,  from  qualities  in  a  being, 
from  laws  in  a  legislator,  from  eternal  verities  in  an  eternal  mind 
that  comprehends  them  and  eternally  possesses  them.  Bossuet 
cites  St.  Augustine,  cites  Plato  himself,  interprets  him  and  de- 
fends him  in  advance  against  those  who  would  make  Platonic 
ideas  beings  subsisting  by  themselves,  whilst  they  really  exist 
only  in  the  mind  of  God. 

Logic,  book  i.,  chap,  xxxvi.  "  When  I  consider  a  rectilineal 
triangle  as  a  figure  bounded  by  three  straight  lines,  and  having 
three  angles  equal  to  two  right  angles,  neither  more  nor  less ; 
and  when  I  pass  from  this  to  an  equilateral  triangle  with  its 
three  sides  and  its  three  angles  equal,  whence  it  follows,  that  I 


according  to  his  custom,  he  shunned.  This  great  mind,  which  may  have 
superiors  in  invention,  but  has  no  equal  for  force  in  common  sense,  was 
very  careful  not  to  place  revelation  and  philosophy  in  opposition  to  each 
other :  he  found  it  the  safer  and  truer  way  to  give  to  each  its  due,  to  bor- 
row from  philosophy  whatever  natural  light  it  can  give,  in  order  to  increase 
it  in  turn  with  the  supernatural  light,  of  which  the  Church  has  been  made 
the  depository.  It  is  in  this  sovereign  good  sense,  capable  of  comprehend- 
ing every  thing,  and  uniting  every  thing,  that  resides  the  supreme  original- 
ity of  Bossuet.  He  shunned  particular  opinions  as  small  minds  seek  them 
for  the  triumph  of  self-love.  He  did  not  think  of  himself ;  he  only  searched 
for  truth,  and  wherever  he  found  it  he  listened  to  it,  well  assured  that  if  the 
connection  between  truths  of  different  orders  sometimes  escapes  us,  it  is  no 
reason  for  closing  the  eyes  to  any  truth.  If  we  wished  to  give  a  scholastic 
name  to  Bossuet,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  Middle  Age,  we  would 
have  to  call  him  the  infallible  doctor.  He  is  not  only  one  of  the  highest,  he 
is  also  one  of  the  best  and  solidest  intelligences  that  ever  existed ;  and  this 
great  conciliator  has  easily  reconciled  religion  and  philosophy,  St.  Augustine 
and  Descartes,  tradition  and  reason." 


92  LECTURE    FOURTH. 

consider  each  angle  of  this  triangle  as  less  than  a  right  angle ; 
and  when  I  'come  again  to  consider  a  right-angled  triangle,  and 
what  I  clearly  see  in  this  idea,  in  connection  with  the  preceding 
ideas,  that  the  two  angles  of  this  triangle  are  necessarily  acute, 
and  that  these  two  acute  angles  are  exactly  equal  to  one  right 
angle,  neither  more  nor  less — T  see  nothing  contingent  and  mu- 
table, and  consequently,  the  ideas  that  represent  to  me  these 
truths  are  eternal.  Were  there  not  in  nature  a  single  equilateral 
or  right-angled  triangle,  or  any  triangle  whatever,  every  thing 
that  I  have  just  considered  would  remain  always  true  and  indu- 
bitable. In  fact,  I  am  not  sure  of  having  ever  seen  an  equilateral 
or  rectilineal  triangle.  Neither  the  rule  nor  the  dividers  could 
assure  me  that  any  human  hand,  however  skilful,  could  ever  make 
a  line  exactly  straight,  or  sides  and  angles  perfectly  equal  to  each 
other.  In  strictness,  we  should  only  need  a  microscope,  in  order, 
not  to  understand,  but  to  see  at  a  glance,  that  the  lines  which  we 
trace  deviate  from  straightness,  and  differ  in  length.  We  have 
never  seen,  then,  any  but  imperfect  images  of  equilateral,  recti- 
lineal, or  isosceles  triangles,  since  they  neither  exist  in  nature,  nor 
can  be  constructed  by  art.  Nevertheless,  what  we  see  of  the  na- 
ture and  the  properties  of  a  triangle,  independently  of  every 
existing  triangle,  is  certain  and  indubitable.  Place  an  under- 
standing in  any  given  time,  or  at  any  point  in  eternity,  thus  to 
speak,  and  it  will  see  these  truths  equally  manifest ;  they  are, 
therefore,  eternal.  Since  the  understanding  does  not  give  being 
to  truth,  but  is  only  employed  in  perceiving  truth,  it  follows,  that 
were  every  created  understanding  destroyed,  these  truths  would 
immutably  subsist.  .  .  ." 

Chap,  xxxvii.  "  Since  there  is  nothing  eternal,  immutable,  in- 
dependent, but  God  alone,  we  must  conclude  that  these  truths  do 
not  subsist  in  themselves,  but  in  God  alone,  and  in  his  eternal 
ideas,  which  are  nothing  else  than  himself. 

"  There  are  those  who,  in  order  to  verify  these  eternal  truths 
which  we  have  proposed,  and  others  of  the  same  nature,  have 
figured  to  themselves  eternal  essences  aside  from  deity — a  pure 


GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   PKINCIPLES.  93 

illusion,  which  comes  from  not  understanding  that  in  God,  as  in 
the  source  of  being,  and  in  his  understanding,  where  resides  the 
art  of  making  and  ordering  all  things,  are  found  primitive  ideas, 
or  as  St.  Augustine  says,  the  eternally  subsisting  reasons  of 
things.  Thus,  in  the  thought  of  the  architect  is  the  primitive 
idea  of  a  house  which  he  perceives  in  himself;  this  intellectual 
house  would  not  be  destroyed  by  any  ruin  of  houses  built  ac- 
cording to  this  interior  model ;  and  if  the  architect  were  eternal, 
the  idea  and  the  reason  of  the  house  would  also  be  eternal.  But, 
without  recurring  to  the  mortal  architect,  there  is  an  immortal 
architect,  or  rather  a  primitive  eternally  subsisting  art  in  the  im- 
mutable thought  of  God,  where  all  order,  all  measure;  all  rule,  all 
proportion,  all  reason,  in  a  word,  all  truth  are  found  in  their 
origin. 

"  These  eternal  verities  which  our  ideas  represent,  are  the  true 
object  of  science ;  and  this  is  the  reason  why  Plato,  in  order  to 
render  us  truly  wise,  continually  reminds  us  of  these  ideas, 
wherein  is  seen,  not  what  is  formed,  but  what  is,  not  what  is  be- 
gotten and  is  corrupt,  what  appears  and  vanishes,  what  is  made 
and  defective,  but  what  eternally  subsists.  It  is  this  intellectual 
world  which  that  divine  philosopher  has  put  in  the  mind  of  God 
before  the  world  was  constructed,  which  is  the  immutable  model 
of  that  great  work.  These  are  the  simple,  eternal,  immutable, 
unbegotten,  incorruptible  ideas  to  which  he  refers  us,  in  order  to 
understand  truth.  This  is  what  has  made  him  say  that  our 
ideas,  images  of  the  divine  ideas,  were  also  immediately  derived 
from  the  divine  ideas,  and  did  not  come  by  the  senses,  which 
serve  very  well,  said  he,  to  awaken  them,  but  not  to  form  them 
in  our  mind.  For  if,  without  having  ever  seen  any  thing  eternal, 
we  have  so  clear  an  idea  of  eternity,  that  is  to  say,  of  being  that 
is  always  the  same ;  if,  without  having  perceived  a  perfect  trian- 
gle, we  understand  it  distinctly,  and  demonstrate  so  many  incon- 
testable truths  concerning  it,  it  is  a  mark  that  these  ideas  do  not 
come  from  our  senses." 


94  LECTURE    FOURTH. 

Treatise  on  the  Knowledge  of  God  and  Self.1  Chap,  iv.,  sect. 
5.  Intelligence  has  for  its  object  eternal  truths,  which  are  nothing 
else  than  God  himself,  in  whom  they  are  always  subsisting  and 
perfectly  understood. 

"...  We  have  already  remarked  that  the  understanding  has 
eternal  verities  for  its  object.  The  standards  by  which  we  meas- 
ure all  things  are  eternal  and  invariable.  We  know  clearly  that 
every  thing  in  the  universe  is  made  according  to  proportion,  from 
the  greatest  to  the  least,  from  the  strongest  to  the  weakest,  and 
we  know  it  well  enough  to  understand  that  these  proportions  are 
related  to  the  principles  of  eternal  truth.  All  that  is  demon- 
strated in  mathematics,  and  in  any  other  science  whatever,  is 
eternal  and  immutable,  since  the  effect  of  the  demonstration  is  to 
show  that  the  thing  cannot  be  otherwise  than  as  it  is  demon- 
strated to  be.  So,  in  order  to  understand  the  nature  and  the 
properties  of  things  which  I  know,  for  example,  a  triangle,  a 
square,  a  circle,  or  the  relations  of  these  figures,  and  all  other 
figures,  to  each  other,  it  is  not  necessary  that  I  should  find  such 
in  nature,  and  I  may  be  sure  that  I  have  never  traced,  never 
seen,  any  that  are  perfect.  Neither  is  it  necessary  that  I  should 
think  that  there  is  motion  in  the  world  in  order  to  understand 
the  nature  of  motion  itself,  or  that  of  the  lines  which  every  mo- 
tion describes,  and  the  hidden  proportions  according  to  which  it 
is  developed.  When  the  idea  of  these  things  is  once  awakened 
in  my  mind,  I  know  that,  whether  they  have  an  actual  existence 
or  not,  so  they  must  be,  that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  be  of 
another  nature,  or  to  be  made  in  a  different  way.  To  come  to 
something  that  concerns  us  more  nearly,  I  mean  by  these  princi- 
ples of  eternal  truth,  that  they  do  not  depend  on  human  exist- 
ence, that,  so  far  as  he  is  capable  of  reasoning,  it  is  the  essential 
duty  of  man  to  live  according  to  reason,  and  to  search  for  his 
maker,  through  fear  of  lacking  the  recognition  of  his  maker, 

1  The  best,  or,  rather,  only  good  edition  is  that  which  was  published  from 
an  authentic  copy,  in  1846,  by  Lecoffre. 


GOD    THE    PRINCIPLE    OF   PRINCIPLES.  95 

if  in  fault  of  searching  for  him,  he  should  be  ignorant  of  him. 
All  these  truths,  and  all  those  which  I  deduce  from  them  by  sure 
reasoning,  subsist  independently  of  all  time.  In  whatever  time 
I  place  a  human  understanding,  it  will  know  them,  but  in  know- 
ing them  it  will  find  them  truths,  it  will  not  make  them  such,  for 
our  cognitions  do  not  make  their  objects,  but  suppose  them.  So 
these  truths  subsist  before  all  time,  before  the  existence  of  a 
human  understanding  :  and  were  every  thing  that  is  made  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  proportion,  that  is  to  say,  every  thing  that  I  see 
in  nature,  destroyed  except  myself,  these  laws  would  be  preserved 
in  my  thought,  and  I  should  clearly  see  that  they  would  always 
be  good  and  always  true,  were  I  also  destroyed  with  the  rest. 

"  If  I  seek  how,  where,  and  in  what  subject  they  subsist  eter- 
nal and  immutable,  as  they  are,  I  am  obliged  to  avow  the  exist- 
ence of  a  being  in  whom  truth  is  eternally  subsisting,  in  whom 
it  is  always  understood  ;  and  this  being  must  be  truth  itself,  and 
must  be  all  truth,  and  from  him  it  is  that  truth  is  derived  in 
every  thing  that  exists  and  has  understanding  out  of  him. 

"  It  is,  then,  in  him,  in  a  certain  manner,  who  is  incomprehen- 
sible1 to  me,  it  is  in  him,  I  say,  that  I  see  these  eternal  truths  ; 
and  to  see  them  is  to  turn  to  him  who  is  immutably  all  truth, 
and  to  receive  his  light. 

"  This  eternal  object  is  God  eternally  subsisting,  eternally  true, 
eternally  truth  itself.  ...  It  is  in  this  eternal  that  these  eternal 
truths  subsist.  It  is  also  by  this  that  I  see  them.  All  other 
men  see  them  as  well  as  myself,  and  we  see  them  always  the 
same,  and  as  having  existed  before  us.  For  we  know  that  we 
have  commenced,  and  we  know  that  these  truths  have  always 
been.  •  Thus  we  see  them  in  a  light  superior  to  ourselves,  and  it 
is  in  this  superior  light  that  we  see  whether  we  act  well  or  ill, 
that  is  to  say,  whether  we  act  according  to  these  constitutive 
principles  of  our  being  or  not.  In  that,  then,  we  see,  with  all 


1  These  words,  d?une  certalne  maniere  qui  ni'est  incomprehensible,  c'est  en 
lui,  dis-je,  are  not  in  the  first  edition  of  1722. 


96  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

other  truths,  the  invariable  rules  of  our  conduct,  and  we  see  that 
there  are  things  in  regard  to  which  duty  is  indispensable,  and 
that  in  things  which  are  naturally  indifferent,  the  true  duty  is  to 
accommodate  ourselves  to  the  greatest  good  of  society.  A  well- 
disposed  man  conforms  to  the  civil  laws,  as  he  conforms  to  cus- 
tom. But  he  listens  to  an  inviolable  law  in  himself,  which  says 
to  him  that  he  must  do  wrong  to  no  one,  that  it  is  better  to  be 
injured  than  to  injure.  .  .  .  The  man  who  sees  these  truths,  by 
these  truths  judges  himself,  and  condemns  himself  when  he  errs. 
Or,  rather,  these  truths  judge  him,  since  they  do  not  accommo- 
date themselves  to  human  judgments,  but  human  judgments  are 
accommodated  to  them.  And  the  man  judges  rightly  when, 
feeling  these  judgments  to  be  variable  in  their  nature,  he  gives 
them  for  a  rule  these  eternal  verities. 

"These  eternal  verities  which  every  understanding  always  per- 
ceives the  same,  by  which  every  understanding  is  governed,  are 
something  of  God,  or  rather,  are  God  himself.  .  .  . 

"Truth  must  somewhere  be  very  perfectly  understood,  and 
man  is  to  himself  an  indubitable  proof  of  this.  For,  whether  he 
considers  himself  or  extends  his  vision  to  the  beings  that  surround 
him,  he  sees  every  thing  subjected  to  certain  laws,  and  to  immu- 
table rules  of  truth.  He  sees  that  he  understands  these  laws,  at 
least  in  part, — he  who  has  neither  made  himself,  nor  any  part  of 
the  universe,  however  small,  and  he  sees  that  nothing  could  have 
been  made  had  not  these  laws  been  elsewhere  perfectly  understood ; 
and  he  sees  that  it  is  necessary  to  recognize  an  eternal  wisdom 
wherein  all  law,  all  order,  all  proportion,  have  their  primitive 
reason.  For  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  there  is  so  much  sequence 
in  truths,  so  much  proportion  in  things,  so  much  economy  in 
their  arrangement,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  world,  and  that  this 
sequence,  this  proportion,  this  economy,  should  nowhere  be  under- 
stood : — and  man,  who  has  made  nothing,  veritably  knowing  these 
things,  although  not  fully  knowing  them,  must  judge  that  there 
is  some  one  who  knows  them  in  their  perfection,  and  that  this  is 
he  who  has  made  all  things.  .  .  ." 


GOD   THE    PRINCIPLE   OF    PRINCIPLES.  97 

Sect.  6  is  wholly  Cartesian.  Bossuet  there  demonstrates  that 
the  soul  knows  by  the  imperfection  of  its  own  intelligence  that 
there  is  elsewhere  a  perfect  intelligence. 

In  sect.  9,  Bossuet  elucidates  anew  the  relation  of  truth  to  God. 

"  Whence  comes  to  my  intelligence  this  impression,  so  pure,  of 
truth !  Whence  come  to  it  those  immutable  rules  that  govern 
reasoning,  that  form  manners,  by  which  it  discovers  the  secret 
proportions  of  figures  and  of  movements  ?  Whence  come  to  it. 
in  a  word,  those  eternal  truths  which  I  have  considered  so  much  ? 
Do  the  triangles,  the  squares,  the  circles,  that  I  rudely  trace  on 
paper,  impress  upon  my  mind  their  proportions  and  their  rela- 
tions ?  Or  are  there  others  whose  perfect  trueness  produces  this 
effect  ?  Where  have  I  seen  these  circles  and  these  triangles  so 
true, — I  who  am  not  sure  of  ever  having  seen  a  perfectly  regular 
figure,  and,  nevertheless,  understand  this  regularity  so  perfectly  'I 
Are  there  somewhere,  either  in  the  world  or  out  of  the  world, 
triangles  or  circles  existing  with  this  perfect  regularity,  whereby 
it  could  be  impressed  upon  my.  mind  ?  And  do  these  rules  of 
reasoning  and  conduct  also  exist  in  some  place,  whence  they  com- 
municate to  me  their  immutable  truth  ?  Or,  indeed,  is  it  not 
rather  he  who  has  everywhere  extended  measure,  proportion, 
truth  itself,  that  impresses  on  my  mind  the  certain  idea  of  them  ? 
...  It  is,  then,  necessary  to  understand  that  the  soul,  made  in 
the  image  of  God,  capable  of  understanding  truth,  Avhich  is  God 
himself,  actually  turns  towards  its  original,  that  is  to  say,  towards 
God,  where  the  truth  appears  to  it  as  soon  as  God  wills  to  make 
the  truth  appear  to  it.  ...  It  is  an  astonishing  thing  that  man 
understands  so  many  truths,  without  understanding  at  the  same 
time  that  all  truth  comes  from  God,  that  it  is  in  God,  that  it  is 
God  himself.  ...  It  is  certain  that  God  is  the  primitive  reason 
of  all  that  exists  and  has  understanding  in  the  universe  ;  that  he 
is  the  true  original,  and  that  every  thing  is  true  by  relation  to 
his  eternal  idea,  that  seeking  truth  is  seeking  him,  and  that  finding 
truth  is  finding  him.  .  .  ." 

Chap,  v.,  sect.  14.  "The  senses  do  not  convey  to  the  soul 

5 


96  LECTURE   FOURTH. 

knowledge  of  truth.  They  excite  it,  awaken  it,  and  apprize  it  of 
certain  effects  :  it  is  solicited  to  search  for  causes,  but  it  discovers 
them,  it  sees  their  connections,  the  principles  which  put  them  in 
motion,  only  in  a  superior  light  that  comes  from  God,  or  is  God 
himself.  God  is,  then,  truth,  which  is  always  the  same  to  all 
minds,  and  the  true  source  of  intelligence.  For  this  reason  intel- 
ligence beholds  the  light,  breathes,  and  lives." 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Leibnitz  comes  to 
crown  these  great  testimonies,  and  to  complete  their  unanimity. 

Here  is  a  passage  from  an  important  treatise  entitled,  Medita- 
tiones  de  Cognitione,  Veritate  ct  Idceis,  in  which  Leibnitz  declares 
that  primary  notions  are  the  attributes  of  God.  "  I  know  not," 
he  says,  "  whether  man  can  perfectly  account  to  himself  for  his 
ideas,  except  by  ascending  to  primary  ideas  for  which  he  can  no 
more  account,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  absolute  attributes  of  God."1 

The  same  doctrine  is  in  the  Principia  Philosophies  sen  Theses 
in  Gratiam  Principis  EugeniL  "  The  intelligence  of  God  is  the 
region  of  eternal  truths,  and  the  ideas  that  depend  upon  them."2 

Theodicea,  part  ii.,  sect.  189.3  "  It  must  not  be  said  with  the 
Scotists  that  eternal  truths  would  subsist  if  there  were  no  under- 
standing, not  even  that  of  God.  For,  in  my  opinion,  it  is  the 
divine  understanding  that  makes  the  reality  of  eternal  truths." 

Nouveaux  Essais  sur  T '  Entendement  Humain,  book  ii.,  chap, 
xvii.  "The  idea  of  the  absolute  is  in  us  internally  like  that  of 
being.  These  absolutes  are  nothing  else  than  the  attributes  of  God, 
and  it  may  be  said  they  are  just  as  much  the  source  of  ideas  as 
God  is  in  himself  the  principle  of  beings." 

Ibid.,  book  iv.,  chap.  xi.  "But  it  will  be  demanded  where 
those  ideas  would  be  if  no  mind  existed,  and  what  would  then 
become  of  the  real  foundation  of  this  certainty  of  eternal  truths  ? 
That  brings  us  in  fine  to  the  last  foundation  of  truths,  to  wit,  to 
that  supreme  and  universal  mind  which  cannot  be  destitute  of 

1  Iieibnitsii  Opera,  edit.  Deutens,  vol.  ii.,  p.  17.        2  Ibid.,  p.  24. 
3 1st  edition,  Amsterdam,  1710,  p.  354,  edit,  of  M.  de  Jaucourt,  Amster- 
dam, 1747,  vol.  ii.,  p.  93. 


GOD   THE  PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES.  99 

existence,  whose  understanding,  to  speak  truly,  is  the  region  of 
eternal  truths,  as  St.  Augustine  saw  and  clearly  enough  expressed 
it.  And  that  it  may  not  be  thought  necessary  to  recur  to  it,  we 
must  consider  that  these  necessary  truths  contain  the  determina- 
ting reason  and  the  regulative  principle  of  existences  themselves, 
and,  in  a  word,  the  laws  of  the  universe.  So  these  unnecessary 
truths,  being  anterior  to  the  existences  of  contingent  beings,  must 
have  their  foundation  in  the  existence  of  a  necessary  substance. 
It  is  there  that  I  find  the  original  of  truths  which  are  stamped 
upon  our  souls,  not  in  the  form  of  propositions,  but  as  sources, 
the  application  and  occasions  of  which  will  produce  actual  enun- 
ciations." 

So,  from  Plato  to  Leibnitz,  the  greatest  metaphysicans  have 
thought  that  absolute  truth  is  an  attribute  of  absolute  being. 
Truth  is  incomprehensible  without  God,  as  God  is  incomprehen- 
sible without  truth.  Truth  is  placed  between  human  intelligence 
and  the  supreme  intelligence,  as  a  kind  of  mediator.  In  the  low- 
est degree,  as  well  as  at  the  height  of  being,  God  is  everywhere 
met,  for  truth  is  everywhere.  Study  nature,  elevate  yourselves  to 
the  laws  that  govern  it  and  make  of  it  as  it  were  a  living  truth : 
— the  more  profoundly  you  understand  its  laws,  the  nearer  you 
approach  to  God.  Study,  above  all,  humanity ;  humanity  is  much 
greater  than  nature,  for  it  comes  from  God  as  well  as  nature,  and 
knows  him,  while  nature  is  ignorant  of  him.  Especially  seek  and 
love  truth,  and  refer  it  to  the  immortal  being  who  is  its  source. 
The  more  you  know  of  the  truth,  the  more  you  know  of  God.  The 
sciences,  so  far  from  turning  us  away  from  religion,  conduct  us  to 
it.  Physics,  with  their  laws,  mathematics,  with  their  sublime 
ideas,  especially  philosophy,  which  cannot  take  a  single  step 
without  encountering  universal  and  necessary  principles,  are  so 
many  stages  on  the  way  to  Deity,  and,  thus  to  speak,  so  many 
temples  in  which  homage  is  perpetually  paid  to  him. 

But  in  the  midst  of  these  high  considerations,  let  us  carefully 
guard  ourselves  against  two  opposite  errors,  from  which  men  of 
fine  genius  have  not  always  known  how  to  preserve  themselves, 


100  LECTURE    FOURTH. 

— against  the  error  of  making  the  reason  of  man  purely  individ- 
ual, and  against  the  error  of  confounding  it  with  truth  and  the 
divine  reason.1  If  the  reason  of  man  is  purely  individual  because 
it  is  in  the  individual,  it  can  comprehend  nothing  that  is  not  indi- 
vidual, nothing  that  transcends  the  limits  wherein  it  is  confined. 
Not  only  is  it  unable  to  elevate  itself  to  any  universal  and  neces- 
sary truth,  not  only  is  it  unable  to  have  any  idea  of  it,  even  any 
suspicion  of  it,  as  one  blind  from  his  birth  can  have  no  suspicion 
that  a  sun  exists ;  but  there  is  no  power,  not  even  that  of  God, 
that  by  any  means  could  make  penetrate  the  reason  of  man  any 
truth  of  that  order  absolutely  repugnant  to  its  nature ;  since,  for 
this  end,  it  would  not  be  sufficient  for  God  to  lighten  our  mind ; 
it  would  be  necessary  to  change  it,  to  add  to  it  another  faculty. 
Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  must  we,  with  Malebranche,  make 
the  reason  of  man  to  such  a  degree  impersonal  that  it  takes  the 
place  of  truth  which  is  its  object,  and  of  God  who  is  its  principle. 
It  is  truth  that  to  us  is  absolutely  impersonal,  and  not  reason. 
Reason  is  in  man,  yet  it  comes  from  God.  Hence  it  is  individual 
and  finite,  whilst  its  root  is  in  the  infinite ;  it  is  personal  by  its 


1  We  have  many  times  designated  these  two  rocks,  for  example,  2d  Series, 
vol.  i.,  lecture  5,  p.  92: — "One  cannot  help  smiling  when,  in  our  times,  he 
hears  individual  reason  spoken  against.  In  truth  it  is  a  great  waste  of  decla- 
mation, for  the  reason  is  not  individual ;  if  it  were,  we  should  govern  it  as 
.we  govern  our  resolutions  and  our  volitions,  we  could  at  any  moment  change 
its  acts,  that  is  to  say,  our  conceptions.  If  these  conceptions  were  merely 
individual,  we  should  not  think  of  imposing  them  upon  another  individual, 
for  to  impose  our  own  individual  and  personal  conceptions  on  another  indi- 
vidual, on  another  person,  would  be  the  most  extravagant  despotism.  .  .  . 
We  call  those  mad  who  do  not  admit  the  relations  of  numbers,  the  difference 
between  the  beautiful  and  the  ugly,  the  just  and  the  unjust.  Why  ?  Because 
we  know  that  it  is  not  the  individual  that  constitutes  these  conceptions,  or, 
in  other  terms,  we  know  that  the  reason  has  something  universal  and  abso- 
lute, that  upon  this  ground  it  obligates  all  individuals;  and  an  individual, 
at  the  same  time  that  he  knows  that  he  himself  is  obligated  by  it,  knows 
that  all  others  are  obligated  by  it  on  the  same  ground." — Ibid.,  p.  93: 
"  Truth  misconceived  is  thereby  neither  altered  nor  destroyed ;  it  subsists 
independently  of  the  reason  that  perceives  it  or  perceives  it  ill.  Truth  in 
itself  is  independent  of  our  reason.  Its  true  subject  is  the  universal  and  ab- 
solute reason." 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE   OF   PRINCIPLES.  101 

relation  to  the  person  in  which  it  resides,  and  must  also  possess  I 
know  not  what  character  of  universality,  of  necessity  even,  in 
order  to  be  capable  of  conceiving  universal  and  necessary  truths ; 
hence  it  seems,  by  turns,  according  to  the  point  of  view  from 
which  it  is  regarded,  pitiable  and  subljme.  Truth  is  in  some  sort 
lent  to  human  reason,  but  it  belongs  to  a  totally  different  reason, 
to  wit,  that  supreme,  eternal,  uncreated  reason,  which  is  God 
himself.  The  truth  in  us  is  nothing  else  than  our  object ;  in  God, 
it  is  one  of  his  attributes,  as  well  as  justice,  holiness,  mercy,  as  we 
shall  subsequently  see.  God  exists ;  and  so  far  as  he  exists,  he 
thinks,  and  his  thoughts  are  truths,  eternal  as  himself,  which  are 
reflected  in  the  laws  of  the  universe,  which  the  reason  of  man  has 
received  the  power  to  attain.  Truth  is  the  offspring,  the  utter- 
ance, I  was  about  to  say,  the  eternal  word  of  God,  if  it  is  per- 
mitted philosophy  to  borrow  this  divine  language  from  that  holy 
religion  which  teaches  us  to  worship  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 
Of  old,  the  theory  of  Ideas,  which  manifest  God  to  men,  and 
remind  them  of  him,  had  given  to  Plato  the  surname  of  the  pre- 
cursor ;  on  account  of  that  theory  of  Ideas  he  was  dear  to  St. 
Augustine,  and  is  invoked  by  Bossuet.  It  is  by  this  same  theory, 
wisely  interpreted,  and  purified  by  the  light  of  our  age,  that  the 
new  philosophy  is  attached  to  the  tradition  of  great  philosophies, 
and  to  that  of  Christianity. 

The  last  problem  that  the  science  of  the  true  presented  is  re- 
solved : — we  are  in  possession  of  the  basis  of  absolute  truths. 
God  is  substance,  reason,  supreme  cause,  and-  the  unity  of  all  these 
truths ;  God,  and  God  alone,  is  to  us  the  boundary  beyond  which 
we  have  nothing  more  to  seek. 


LECTUKE  Y. 

ON   MYSTICISM. 

Distinction  between  the  philosophy  that  we  profess  and  mysticism.  Mysti- 
cism consists  in  pretending  to  know  God  without  an  intermediary. — Two 
sorts  of  mysticism. — Mysticism  of  sentiment.  Theory  of  sensibility.  Two 
sensibilities — the  one  external,  the  other  internal,  and  corresponding  to 
the  soul  as  external  sensibility  corresponds  to  nature. — Legitimate  part  of 
sentiment. — Its  aberrations. — Philosophical  mysticism.  Plotinus :  God,  or 
absolute  unity,  perceived  without  an  intermediary  by  pure  thought. — 
Ecstasy. — Mixture  of  superstition  and  abstraction  in  mysticism. — Conclu- 
sion of  the  first  part  of  the  course. 

WHETHER  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  forces  and  the  laws 
that  animate  and  govern  matter  without  belonging  to  it,  or  as 
the  order  of  our  labors  calls  us  to  do,  reflect  upon  the  universal 
and  necessary  truths  which  our  mind  discovers  but  does  not  con- 
stitute, the  least  systematic  use  of  reason  makes  us  naturally 
conclude  from  the  forces-  and  laws  of  the  universe  that  there  is  a 
first  intelligent  mover,  and  from  necessary  truths  that  there  is  a 
necessary  being  who  alone  is  their  substance.  We  do  not  per- 
ceive God,  but  we  conceive  him,  upon  the  faith  of  this  admirable 
world  exposed  to  our  view,  and  upon  that  of  this  other  world, 
more  admirable  still,  which  we  bear  in  ourselves.  By  this  double 
road  we  succeed  in  going  to  God.  This  natural  course  is  that  of 
all  men  :  it  must  be  sufficient  for  a  sound  philosophy.  But  there 
are  feeble  and  presumptuous  minds  that  do  not  know  how  to  go 
thus  far,  or  do  not  know  how  to  stop  there.  Confined  to  experi- 
ence, they  do  not  dare  to  conclude  from  what  they  see  in  what 
they  do  not  see,  as  if  at  all  times,  at  the  sight  of  the  first  phenom- 
enon that  appears  to  their  eyes,  they  did  not  admit  that  this 


ON   MYSTICISM.  103 

phenomenon  has  a  cause,  even  when  this  cause  does  not  come 
within  the  reach  of  their  senses.  They  do  not  perceive  it,  yet 
they  believe  in  it,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  necessarily  con- 
ceive'it.  Man  and  the  universe  are  also  facts  that  cannot  but 
have  a  cause,  although  this  cause  may  neither  be  seen  by  our 
eyes  nor  touched  by  our  hands.  Reason  has  been  given  us  for 
the  very  purpose  of  going,  and  without  any  circuit  of  reasoning, 
from  the  visible  to  the  invisible,  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite, 
from  the  imperfect  to  the  perfect,  and  also,  from  necessary  and 
universal  truths,  which  surround  us  on  every  side,  to  their  eternal 
and  necessary  principle.  Such  is  the  natural  and  legitimate 
bearing  of  reason.  It  possesses  an  evidence  of  which  it  renders 
no  account,  and  is  not  thereby  less  irresistible  to  whomsoever  does 
not  undertake  to  contest  with  God  the  veracity  of  the  faculties 
which  he  has  received.  But  one  does  not  revolt  against  reason 
with  impunity.  It  punishes  our  false  wisdom  by  giving  us  up  to 
extravagance.  When  one  has  confined  himself  to  the  narrow 
limits  of  what  he  directly  perceives,  he  is  smothered  by  these 
limits,  wishes  to  go  out  of  them  at  any  price,  and  invokes  some 
other  means  of  knowing ;  he  did  not  dare  to  admit  the  existence 
of  an  invisible  God,  and  now  behold  him  aspiring  to  enter  into 
immediate  communication  with  him,  as  with  sensible  objects,  and 
the  objects  of  consciousness.  It  is  an  extreme  feebleness  for  a 
rational  being  thus  to  doubt  reason,  and  it  is  an  incredible  rash- 
ness, in  this  despair  of  intelligence,  to  dream  of  direct  communi- 
cation with  God.  This  desperate  and  ambitious  dream  is  mys- 
ticism. 

It  behooves  us  to  separate  with  care  this  chimera,  that  is  not 
without  danger,  from  the  cause  that  we  defend.  It  behooves  us 
so  much  the  more  to  openly  break  with  mysticism,  as  it  seems  to 
touch  us  more  nearly,  as  it  pretends  to  be  the  last  word  of  phi- 
losophy, and  as  by  an  appearance  of  greatness  it  is  able  to  seduce 
many  a  noble  soul,  especially  at  one  of  those  epochs  of  lassitude, 
when,  after  the  cruel  disappointment  of  excessive  hopes,  human 
reason,  having  lost  faith  in  its  own  power  without  having  lost  the 


104  LECTURE  FIFTH. 

need  of  God,  in  order  to  satisfy  this  immortal  need,  addresses 
itself  -to  every  thing  except  itself,  and  in  fault  of  knowing  how 
to  go  to  God  by  the  way  that  is  open  to  it,  throws  itself  out  of 
common  sense,  and  tries  the  new,  the  chimerical,  even  the  ab- 
surd, in  order  to  attain  the  impossible. 

Mysticism  contains  a  pusillanimous  skepticism  in  the  place  of 
reason,  and,  at  the  same  time,,  a  faith  blind  and  carried  even  to 
the  oblivion  of  all  the  conditions  imposed  upon  human  nature. 
To  conceive  God  under  the  transparent  veil  of  the  universe  and 
above  the  highest  truths,  is  at  once  too  much  and  too  little  for 
mysticism.  It  does  not  believe  that  it  knows  God,  if  it  knows 
him  only  in  his  manifestations  and  by  the  signs  of  his  existence : 
it  wishes  to  perceive  him  directly,  it  wishes  to  be  united  to  him, 
sometimes  by  sentiment,  sometimes  by  some  other  extraordinary 
process. 

Sentiment  plays  so  important  a  part  in  mysticism,  that  our 
first  care  must  be  to  investigate  the  nature  and  proper  function 
of  this  interesting  and  hitherto  ill-studied  part  of  human  nature. 

It  is  necessary  to  distinguish  sentiment  well  from  sensation. 
There  are,  in  some  sort,  two  sensibilities  :  one  is  directed  to  the 
external  world,  and  is  charged  with  transmitting  to  the  soul  the 
impressions  that  it  sees ;  the  other  is  wholly  interior,  and  is  re- 
lated to  the  soul  as  the  other  is  to  nature, — its  function  is  to  re- 
ceive the  impression,  and,  as  it  were,  the  rebound  of  what  passes 
in  the  soul.  Have  we  discovered  any  truth  ?  there  is  something 
in  us  which  feels  joy  on  account  of  it.  Have  we  performed  a 
good  action  ?  we  receive  our  reward  in  a  feeling  of  satisfaction 
less  vivid,  but  more  delicate  and  more  durable  than  all  the  agree- 
able sensations  that  come  from  the  body.  It  seems  as  if  intelli- 
gence also  had  its  intimate  organ,  which  suffers  or  enjoys,  accord- 
ing to  the  state  of  the  intelligence.  We  bear  in  ourselves  a 
profound  source  of  emotion,  at  once  physical  and  moral,  which 
expresses  the  union  of  our  two  natures.  The  animal  does  not 
go  beyond  sensation,  and  pure  thought  belongs  only  to  the  an- 
gelic nature.  The  sentiment  that  partakes  of  sensation  and 


ON   MYSTICISM.  105 

thought  is  the  portion  of  humanity.  Sentiment  is,  it  is  true,  only 
an  echo  of  reason ;  but  this  echo  is  sometimes  better  understood 
than  reason  itself,  because  it  resounds  in  the  most  intimate,  the 
most  delicate  portions  of  the  soul,  and  moves  the  entire  man. 

It  is  a  singular,  but  incontestable  fact,  that  as  soon  as  reason 
has  conceived  truth,  the  soul  attaches  itself  to  it,  and  loves  it. 
Yes,  the  soul  loves  truth.  It  is  a  wonderful  thing  that  a  being 
strayed  into  one  corner  of  the  universe,  alone  charged  with  sus- 
taining himself  against  so  many  obstacles,  who,  it  would  seem, 
has  enough  to  do  to  think  of  himself,  to  preserve  and  somewhat 
embellish  his  life,  is  capable  of  loving  what  is  not  related  to 
him,  and  exists  only  in  an  invisible  world !  This  disinterested 
love  of  truth  gives  evidence  of  the  greatness  of  him  who  feels  it. 

Reason  takes  one  step  more : — it  is  not  contented  with  truth, 
even  absolute  truth,  when  convinced  that  it  possesses  it  ill,  that  it 
does  not  possess  it  as  it  really  is ;  as  long  as  it  has  not  placed  it 
upon  its  eternal  basis ;  having  arrived  there,  it  stops  as  before  its 
impassable  barrier,  having  nothing  more  to  seek,  nothing  more  to 
find.  Sentiment  follows  reason,  to  which  it  is  attached ;  it  stops, 
it  rests,  only  in  the  love  of  the  infinite  being. 

In  fact,  it  is  the  infinite  that  we  love,  while  we  believe  that  we 
are  loving  finite  things,  even  while  loving  truth,  beauty,  virtue. 
And  so  surely  is  it  the  infinite  itself  that  attracts  and  charms  us, 
that  its  highest  manifestations  do  not  satisfy  us  until  we  have  re- 
ferred them  to  their  immortal  source.  The  heart  is  insatiable, 
because  it  aspires  after  the  infinite.  This  sentiment,  this  need  of 
the  infinite,  is  at  the  foundation  of  the  greatest  passions,  and  the 
most  trifling  desires.  A  sigh  of  the  soul  in  the  presence  of  the 
starry  heavens,  the  melancholy  attached  to  the  passion  of  glory, 
to  ambition,  to  all  the  great  emotions  of  the  soul,  express  it  better 
without  doubt,  but  they  do  not  express  it  more  than  the  caprice 
and  mobility  of  those  vulgar  loves,  wandering  from  object  to  object 
in  a  perpetual  circle  of  ardent  desires,  of  poignant  disquietudes, 
and  mournful  disenchantments. 

Let  us  designate  another  relation  between  reason  and  sentiment. 
5* 


106  LECTURE   FIFTH. 

The  mind  at  first  precipitates  itself  towards  its  object  without 
rendering  to  itself  an  account  of  what  it  does,  of  what  it  perceives, 
of  what  it  feels.  But,  with  the  faculty  of  thinking,  of  feeling,  it 
has  also  that  of  willing ;  it  possesses  the  liberty  of  returning  to 
itself,  of  reflecting  on  its  own  thought  and  sentiment,  of  consenting 
to  this,  or  of  resisting  it,  of  abstaining  from  it,  or  of  reproducing 
its  thought  and  sentiment,  while  stamping  them  with  a  new  char- 
acter. Spontaneity,  reflection, — these  are  the  two  great  forms  of 
intelligence.1  One  is  not  the  other ;  but,  after  all,  the  latter  does 
little  more  than  develop  the  former ;  they  contain  at  bottom  the 
same  things  : — the  point  of  view  alone  is  different.  Every  thing 
that  is  spontaneous  is  obscure  and  confused ;  reflection  carries  with 
it  a  clear  and  distinct  view. 

Reason  does  not  begin  by  reflection ;  it  does  not  at  first  per- 
ceive the  truth  as  universal  and  necessary ;  consequently,  when 
it  passes  from  idea  to  being,  when  it  refers  truth  to  the  real  being 
that  is  its  subject,  it  has  not  sounded,  it  even  has  no  suspicion  of 
the  depth  of  the  chasm  it  passes ;  it  passes  it  by  means  of  the 
power  which  is  in  it,  but  it  is  not  astonished  at  what  it  has  done. 
It  is  subsequently  astonished,  and  undertakes  by  the  aid  of  the 
liberty  with  which  it  is  endowed,  to  do  the  opposite  of  what  it 
has  done,  to  deny  what  it  has  affirmed.  Here  commences  the 
strife  between  sophism  and  common  sense,  between  false  science 
and  natural  truth,  between  good  and  bad  philosophy,  both  of 
which  come  from  free  reflection.  The  sad  and  sublime  privilege 
of  reflection  is  error;  but  reflection  is  the  remedy  for  the  evil  it 
produces.  If  it  can  deny  natural  truth,  usually  it  confirms  it,  re- 
turns to  common  sense  by  a  longer  or  shorter  circuit ;  it  opposes 
in  vain  all  the  tendencies  of  human  nature,  by  which  it  is  almost 
always  overcome,  and  brought  back  submissive  to  the  first  inspi- 
rations of  reason,  fortified  by  this  trial.  But  there  is  nothing 
more  in  the  end  than  there  was  at  the  beginning ;  only  in  prim- 
itive inspiration  there  was  a  power  which  was  ignorant  of  itself, 

1  See  the  preceding  lectures. 


ON   MYSTICISM.  107 

and  in  the  legitimate  results  of  reflection  there  is  a  power  which 
knows  itself: — one  is  the  triumph  of  instinct,  the  other,  that  of 
true  science. 

Sentiment  which  accompanies  intelligence  in  all  its  proceedings 
presents  the  same  phenomena. 

The  heart,  like  reason,  pursues  the  infinite,  and  the  only  dif- 
ference there  is  in  these  pursuits  is,  that  sometimes  the  heart 
seeks  the  infinite  without  knowing  that  it  seeks  it,  and  sometimes 
it  renders  to  itself  an  account  of  the  final  end  of  the  need  of  loving 
what  disturbs  it.  When  reflection  is  added  to  love,  if  it  finds 
that  tho  object  loved  is  in  fact  worthy  of  being  loved,  far  from 
enfeebling  love,  it  strengthens  it;  far  from  clipping  its  divine 
wings,  it  develops  them,  and  nourishes  them,  as  Plato1  says.  But 
if  the  object  of  love  is  only  a  symbol  of  the  true  beauty,  only 
capable  of  exciting  the  desire  of  the  soul  without  satisfying  it, 
reflection  breaks  the  charm  which  held  the  heart,  dissipates  the 
chimera  that  enchained  it.  It  must  be  very  sure  in  regard  to  its 
attachments,  in  order  to  dare  to  put  them  to  the  proof  of  reflec- 
tion. 0  Psyche !  Psyche !  preserve  thy  good  fortune ;  do  not 
sound  the  mystery  too  deeply.  Take  care  not  to  bring  the  fear- 
ful light  near  the  invisible  lover  with  whom  thy  soul  is  enamored. 
At  the  first  ray  of  the  fatal  lamp  love  is  awakened,  and  flies  away. 
Charming  image  of  what  takes  place  in  the  soul,  when  to  the 
serene  and  unsuspecting  confidence  of  sentiment  succeeds  reflection 
with  its  bitter  train.  This  is  perhaps  also  the  meaning  of  the 
biblical  account  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.2  Before  science  and 
reflection  are  innocence  and  faith.  Science  and  reflection  at  first 
engender  doubt,  disquietude,  distaste  for  what  one  possesses,  the 
disturbed  pursuit  of  what  one  knows  not,  troubles  of  mind  and 
soul,  sore  travail  of  thought,  and,  in  life,  many  faults,  until  inno- 
cence, forever  lost,  is  replaced  by  virtue,  simple  faith  by  true 

1  See  the  Phcedrus  and  the  JSa-nquet,  vol.  vii.  of  our  translation. 

a  We  shall  not  be  accused  of  perverting  the  holy  Scriptures  by  these  anal- 
ogies, for  we  give  them  only  as  analogies,  and  St.  Augustine  and  Bossuet  are 
full  of  such. 


108  LECTURE  Jj'JLb'IH. 

science,  until  love,  through  so  many  vanishing  illusions,  finally 
succeeds  in  reaching  its  true  object 

Spontaneous  love  has  the  native  grace  of  ignorance  and  happi- 
ness. Reflective  love  is  very  different ;  it  is  serious,  it  is  great, 
even  in  its  faults,  with  the  greatness  of  liberty.  Let  us  not  be  in 
haste  to  condemn  reflection :  if  it  often  produces  egotism,  it  also 
produces  devotion.  What,  in  fact,  is  self-devotion  ?  It  is  giving 
ourselves  freely,  with  full  knowledge  of  what  we  are  doing. 
Therein  consists  the  sublimity  of  love,  love  worthy  of  a  noble  and 
generous  creature,  not  an  ignorant  and  blind  love.  When  affec- 
tion has  conquered  selfishness,  instead  of  loving  its  object  for  its 
own  sake,  the  soul  gives  itself  to  its  object,  and  miracle  of  love, 
the  more  it  gives  the  more  it  possesses,  nourishing  itself  by  its 
own  sacrifices,  and  finding  its  strength  and  its  joy  in  its  entire 
self-abandonment.  But  there  is  only  one  being  who  is  worthy 
of  being  thus  loved,  and  who  can  be  thus  loved  without  illusions, 
and  without  mistakes,  at  once  without  limits,  and  without  regret, 
to  wit,  the  perfect  being  who  alone  does  not  fear  reflection,  who 
alone  can  fill  the  entire  capacity  of  our  heart. 

Mysticism  corrupts  sentiment  by  exaggerating  its  power. 

Mysticism  begins  by  suppressing  in  man  reason,  or,  at  least,  it 
subordinates  and  sacrifices  reason  to  sentiment. 

Listen  to  mysticism  :  it  says  that  by  the  heart  alone  is  man  in 
relation  with  God.  All  that  is  great,  beautiful,  infinite,  eternal, 
love  alone  reveals  to  us.  Reason  is  only  a  lying  faculty.  Be- 
cause it  may  err,  and  does  err,  it  is  said  that  it  always  errs. 
Reason  is  confounded  with  every  thing  that  it  is  not.  The  errors 
of  the  senses,  and  of  reasoning,  the  illusions  of  the  imagination, 
even  the  extravagances  of  passion,  which  sometimes  give  rise  to 
those  of  mind,  every  thing  is  laid  to  the  charge  of  reason.  Its 
imperfections  are  triumphed  over,  its  miseries  are  complacently 
exhibited ;  the  most  audacious  dogmatical  system — since  it  aspires 
to  put  man  and  God  in  immediate  communication — borrows 
against  reason  all  the  arms  of  skepticism. 


ON  MYSTICISM.  109 

Mysticism  goes  farther :  it  attacks  liberty  itself;  it  orders  lib- 
erty to  renounce  itself,  in  order  to  identify  itself  by  love  with  him 
from  whom  the  infinite  separates  us.  The  ideal  of  virtue  is  no 
longer  the  courageous  perseverance  of  the  good  man,  who,  in 
struggling  against  temptation  and  suffering,  makes  life  holy  ;  it 
is  no  longer  the  free  and  enlightened  devotion  of  a  loving  soul ; 
it  is  the  entire  and  blind  abandonment  of  ourselves,  of  our  will,  of 
our  being,  in  a  barren  contemplation  of  thought,  in  a  prayer 
without  utterance,  and  almost  without  consciousness. 

The  source  of  mysticism  is  in  that  incomplete  view  of  human 
nature,  which  knows  not  how  to  discern  in  it  what  therein  is  most 
profound,  which  betakes  itself  to  what  is  therein  most  striking, 
most  seizing,  and,  consequently,  also  most  seizable.  We  have 
already  said  that  reason  is  not  noisy,  and  often  is  not  heard, 
whilst  its  echo  of  sentiment  loudly  resounds.  In  this  compound 
phenomenon,  it  is  natural  that  the  most  apparent  element  should 
cover  and  dim  the  most  obscure. 

Moreover,  what  relations,  what  deceptive  resemblances  between 
these  two  faculties  !  Without  doubt,  in  their  development,  they 
manifestly  differ ;  when  reason  becomes  reasoning,  one  easily  dis- 
tinguishes its  heavy  movement  from  the  flight  of  sentiment ;  but 
spontaneous  reason  is  almost  confounded  with  sentiment, — there 
is  the  same  rapidity,  the  same  obscurity.  Add  that  they  pursue 
the  same  object,  and  almost  always  go  together.  It  is  not,  then, 
astonishing  that  they  should  be  confounded. 

A  wise  philosophy  distinguishes1  them  without  separating 
them.  Analysis  demonstrates  that  reason  precedes,  and  that 
sentiment  follows.  How  can  we  love  what  we  are  ignorant  of? 
In  order  to  enjoy  the  truth,  is  it  not  necessary  to  know  it  more 
or  less  ?  In  order  to  be  moved  by  certain  ideas,  is  it  not  neces- 
sary to  have  possessed  them  in  some  degree  ?  To  absorb  reason 

1  See  part  ii.,  The  Beautiful,  lecture  6,  and  part,  iii.,  lecture  13,  on  the 
Morals  of  Sentiment.  See  also  our  Pascal,  preface  of  the  last  edition,  p.  8, 
etc.,  vol.  i.  of  the  4th  Series. 


110  LECTURE  1'IPTH. 

in  sentiment  is  to  stifle  the  cause  in  the  effect.  When  one  speaks 
of  the  light  of  the  heart,  he  designates,  without  knowing  it,  that 
light  of  the  spontaneous  reason  which  discovers  to  us  truth  by  a 
pure  and  immediate  intuition  entirely  opposite  to  the  slow  and 
laborious  processes  of  the  reflective  reason  and  reasoning. 

Sentiment  by  itself  is  a  source  of  emotion,  not  of  knowledge. 
The  sole  faculty  of  knowledge  is  reason.  At  bottom,  if  senti- 
ment is  different  from  sensation,  it  nevertheless  pertains  on  all 
sides  to  general  sensibility,  and  it  is,  like  it,  variable ;  it  has,  like 
it,  its  interruptions,  its  vivacity,  and  its  lassitude,  its  exaltation 
and  its  short-comings.  The  inspirations  of  sentiment,  then, 
which  are  essentially  mobile  and  individual,  cannot  be  raised  to 
a  universal  and  absolute  rule.  It  is  not  so  with  reason ;  it  is 
constantly  the  same  in  each  one  of  us,  the  same  in  all  men.  The 
laws  that  govern  its  exercise  constitute  the  common  legislation  of 
all  intelligent  beings.  There  is  no  intelligence  that  does  not 
conceive  some  universal  and  necessary  truth,  and,  consequently, 
the  infinite  being  who  is  its  principle.  These  grand  objects 
being  once  known  excite  in  the  souls  of  all  men  the  emotions 
that  we  have  endeavored  to  describe.  These  emotions  partake 
of  the  dignity  of  reason  and  the  mobility  of  imagination  and 
sensibility.  Sentiment  is  the  harmonious  and  living  relation  be- 
tween reason  and  sensibility.  Suppress  one  of  the  two  terms, 
and  what  becomes  of  the  relation  ?  Mysticism  pretends  to  ele- 
vate man  directly  to  God,  and  does  not  see  that  in  depriving 
reason  of  its  power,  it  really  deprives  him  of  that  which  makes 
him  know  God,  and  puts  him  in  a  just  communication  with  God 
by  the  intermediary  of  eternal  and  infinite  truth. 

The  fundamental  error  of  mysticism  is,  that  it  discards  this  in- 
termediary, as  if  it  were  a  barrier  and  not  a  tie  :  it  makes  the 
infinite  being  the  direct  object  of  love.  But  such  a  love  can  be 
sustained  only  by  superhuman  efforts  that  end  in  folly.  Love 
tends  to  unite  itself  with  its  object :  mysticism  absorbs  love  in  its 
object.  Hence  the  extravagances  of  that  mysticism  so  severely 
and  so  justly  condemned  by  Bossuet  and  the  Church  in  quiet- 


ON   MYSTICISM.  Ill 

ism.1  Quietism  lulls  to  sleep  the  activity  of  man,  extinguishes 
his  intelligence,  substitutes  indolent  and  irregular  contemplation 
for  the  seeking  of  truth  and  the  fulfilment  of  duty.  The  true 
union  of  the  soul  with  God  is  made  by  truth  and  virtue.  Every 
other  union  is  a  chimera,  a  peril,  sometimes  a  crime.  It  is  not 
permitted  man  to  reject,  under  any  pretext,  that  which  makes 
him  man,  that  which  renders  him  capable  of  comprehending  God, 
and  expressing  in  himself  an  imperfect  image  of  God,  that  is  to 
say,  reason,  liberty,  conscience.  Without  doubt,  virtue  has  its 
prudence,  and  if  we  must  never  yield  to  passion,  there  are  diverse 
ways  of  combating  it  in  order  to  conquer  it.  One  can  let  it  sub- 
side, and  resignation  and  silence  may  have  their  legitimate  em- 
ployment. There  is  a  portion  of  truth,  of  utility  even,  in  the 
Spiritual  Letters,  even  in  the  Maxims  of  the  Saints.  But,  in 
general,  it  is  unsafe  to  anticipate  in  this  world  the  prerogatives 
of  death,  and  to  dream  of  sanctity  when  virtue  alone  is  required 
of  us,  when  virtue  is  so  difficult  to  attain,  even  imperfectly.  The 
best  quietism  can,  at  most,  be  only  a  halt  in  the  course,  a  truce 
in  the  strife,  or  rather  another  manner  of  combating.  It  is  not 
by  flight  that  battles  are  gained ;  in  order  to  gain  them  it  is 
necessary  to  come  to  an  engagement,  so  much  the  more  as  duty 
consists  in  combating  still  more  than  in  conquering.  Of  the 
two  opposite  extremes — stoicism  and  quietism — the  first,  taken 
all  in  all,  is  preferable  to  the  second ;  for  if  it  does  not  always 
elevate  man  to  God,  it  maintains,  at  least,  human  personality, 
liberty,  conscience,  whilst  quietism,  in  abolishing  these,  abolishes 
the  entire  man.  Oblivion  of  life  and  its  duties,  inertness,  sloth, 
death  of  soul, — such  are  the  fruits  of  that  love  of  God,  which  is 
lost  in  the  sterile  contemplation  of  its  object,  provided  it  does  not 
cause  still  sadder  aberrations !  There  comes  a  moment  when 
the  soul  that  believes  itself  united  with  God,  puffed  up  with  this 
imaginary  possession,  despises  both  the  body  and  human  person- 
ality to  such  an  extent  that  all  its  actions  become  indifferent  to 

1  See  the  admirable  work  of  Bossuet,  Instruction  sur  les  etats  d?  Oraison. 


112  LECTUBE  FIFTH. 

it,  and  good  and  evil  are  in  its  eyes  the  same.  Thus  it  is  that 
fanatical  sects  have  been  seen  mingling  crime  and  devotion,  find- 
ing in  one  the  excuse,  often  even  the  motive,  of  the  other,  and 
prefacing  infamous  irregularities  or  abominable  cruelties  with 
mystic  transports, — deplorable  consequences  of  the  chimera  of 
pure  love,  of  the  pretension  of  sentiment  to  rule  over  reason,  to 
serve  alone  as  a  guide  to  the  human  soul,  and  to  put  itself  in 
direct  communication  with  God,  without  the  intermediary  of  the 
visible  world,  and  without  the  still  surer  intermediary  of  intelli- 
gence and  truth. 

But  it  is  time  to  pass  to  another  kind  of  mysticism,  more  sin- 
gular, more  learned,  more  refined,  and  quite  as  unreasonable,  al- 
though it  presents  itself  in  the  very  name  of  reason. 

We  have  seen1  that  reason,  if  one  of  the  principles  which  gov- 
ern it  be  destroyed,  cannot  lay  hold  of  truth,  not  even  absolute 
truths  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  order ;  it  refers  all  universal, 
necessary,  absolute  truths,  to  the  being  that  alone  can  explain 
them,  because  in  him  alone  are  necessary  and  absolute  existence, 
immutability,  and  infinity.  God  is  the  substance  of  uncreated 
truths,  as  he  is  the  cause  of  created  existences.  Necessary  truths 
find  in  God  their  natural  subject.  If  God  has  not  arbitrarily 
made  them, — which  is  not  in  accordance  with  their  essence  and 
his, — he  constitutes  them,  inasmuch  as  they  are  himself.  His 
intelligence  possesses  them  as  the  manifestations  of  itself.  As 
long  as  our  intelligence  has  not  referred  them  to  the  divine  intel- 
ligence, they  are  to  it  an  effect  without  cause,  a  phenomenon 
without  substance.  It  refers  them,  then,  to  their  cause  and  their 
substance.  And  in  that  it  obeys  an  imperative  need,  a  fixed 
principle  of  reason. 

Mysticism  breaks  in  some  sort  the  ladder  that  elevates  us  to 
infinite  substance  :  it  regards  this  substance  alone,  independent- 
ly8 of  the  truth  that  manifests  it,  and  it  imagines  itself  to  possess 

1  Lecture  4. 

8  S«e  especially  in  our  writings  the  regular  and  detailed  refutation  of  the 
double  extravagance  of  considering  substance  apart  from  its  determinations 


ON   MYSTICISM.  113 

also  the  pure  absolute,  pure  unity,  being  in  itself.  The  advan- 
tage which  mysticism  here  seeks,  is  to  give  to  thought  an  object 
wherein  there  is  no  mixture,  no  division,  no  multiplicity,  wherein 
every  sensible  and  human  element  has  entirely  disappeared.  But 
in  order  to  obtain  this  advantage,  it  must  pay  the  cost  of  it.  It 
is  a  very  simple  means  of  freeing  theodicea  from  every  shade  of 
anthropomorphism ;  it  is  reducing  God  to  an  abstraction,  to  the 
abstraction  of  being  in  itself.  Being  in  itself,  it  is  true,  is  free 
from  all  division,  but  upon  the  condition  that  it  have  no  attribute, 
no  quality,  and  even  that  it  be  deprived  of  knowledge  and  intel- 
ligence ;  for  intelligence,  if  elevated  as  it  might  be,  always  sup- 
poses the  distinction  between  the  intelligent  subject  and  the  in- 
telligible object.  A  God  from  whom  absolute  unity  excludes, 
intelligence,  is  the  God  of  the  mystic  philosophy. 


and  its  qualities,  or  of  considering  its  qualities  and  its  faculties  apart  from 
the  being  that  possesses  them.  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  3,  On  Gmdillac. 
and  vol.  v.,  lectures  5  and  6,  On  Kant.  We  say,  the  same  Series,  vol.'iv., 
p.  56:  "There  are  philosophers  beyond  the  Ehine,  who,  to  appear  very 
profound,  are  not  contented  with  qualities  and  phenomena,  and  aspire  to 
pure  substance,  to  being  in  itself.  The  problem  stated  as  follows,  is  quite 
insoluble :  the  knowledge  of  such  a  substance  is  impossible,  for  this  very 
simple  reason,  that  such  a  substance  does  not  exist.  Being  in  itself,  das 
Ding  in  sich,  which  Kant  seeks,  escapes  him,  and  this  does  not  humiliate 
Kant  and  philosophy ;  for  there  is  no  being  in  itself.  The  human  mind 
may  form  to  itself  an  abstract  and  general  idea  of  being,  but  this  idea  has 
no  real  object  in  nature.  All  being  is  determinate,  if  it  is  real;  and  to  be 
determinate  is  to  possess  certain  modes  of  being,  transitory  and  accidental, 
or  constant  and  essential.  Knowledge  of  being  in  itself  is  then  not  merely 
interdicted  to  the  human  mind ;  it  is  contrary  to  the  nature  of  things.  At 
the  other  extreme  of  metaphysics  is  a  powerless  psychology,  which,  by 
fear  of  a  hollow  ontology,  is  condemned  to  voluntary  ignorance.  We  are 
not  able,  say  these  philosophers,  Mr.  Dugald  Stewart,  for  example,  to  attain 
being  in  itself;  it  is  permitted  us  to  know  only  phenomena  and  qualities; 
so  that,  in  order  not  to  wander  in  search  of  the  substance  of  the  soul,  they 
do  not  dare  affirm  its  spirituality,  and  devote  themselves  to  the  study  of  its 
diiferent  faculties.  Equal  error,  equal  chimera  !  There  are  no  more  quali- 
ties without  being,  than  being  without  qualities.  No  being  is  without  it.< 
determinations,  and  reciprocally  its  determinations  are  not  without  it.  To 
consider  the  determinations  of  being  independently  of  the  being  which 
possesses  them,  is  no  longer  to  observe ;  it  is  to  abstract,  to  make  an  ab- 
straction quite  as  extravagant  as  that  of  being  considered  independently  ol' 
its  qualities." 


114  LECTURE   FIFTH. 

How  could  the  school  of  Alexandria,  how  could  Plotinus,  its 
founder,1  in  the  midst  of  the  lights  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  civili- 
zation, have  arrived  at  such  a  strange  notion  of  the  Divinity  ? 
By  the  abuse  of  Platonism,  by  the  corruption  of  the  best  and 
severest  method,  that  of  Socrates  and  Plato. 

The  Platonic  method,  the  dialectic  process,  as  its  author  calls 
it,  searches  in  particular,  variable,  contingent  things,  for  what 
they  also  have  general,  durable,  one,  that  is  to  say,  their  Idea, 
and  is  thus  elevated  to  Ideas,  as  to  the  only  true  objects  of  intel- 
ligence, in  order  to  be  elevated  still  from  these  Ideas,  which  are 
arranged  in  an  admirable  hierarchy,  to  the  first  of  all,  beyond 
which  intelligence  has  nothing  more  to  conceive,  nothing  more 
to  seek.  By  rejecting  in  finite  things  their  limit,  their  individu- 
ality, we  attain  genera,  Ideas,  and,  by  them,  their  sovereign  prin- 
ciple. But  this  principle  is  not  the  last  of  genera,  nor  the  last  of 
abstractions ;  it  is  a  real  and  substantial  principle.2  The  God  of 
Plato  is  not  called  merely  unity,  he  is  called  the  Good ;  he  is 
not  the  lifeless  substance  of  the  Eleatics  ;*  he  is  endowed  with 
life  and  movement  ;4  strong  expressions  that  show  how  much  the 
God  of  the  Platonic  metaphysics  differs  from  that  of  mysticism. 
This  God  is  the  father  of  the  world?  He  is  also  the  father  of 
truth,  that  light  of  spirits.6  He  dwells  in  the  midst  of  Ideas 
which  make  him,  a  true  God  inasmuch  as  he  is  with  them.1  He 
possesses  august  and  holy  intelligence?  He  has  made  the  world 

1  Ou  the  school  of  Alexandria,  see  2d  Series,  vol.  ii.,  Skf.tch  of  a  General 
History  of  Philosophy,  lecture  8,  p.  211,  and  8d  Series,  vol.  i.,  passim. 

2  See  the  previous  lecture. 

3  3d  Series,  vol.  i.,  Ancient  Philosophy,  article  Xenophanes,  and  article 
Zeno. 

4  The  Sophist,  vol.  xi.  of  our  translation,  p.  261. 

5  Timceus,  vol.  xii.,  p.  117.  8  Republic,  book  vii.,  p.  70  of  vol.  x. 

7  Phcedrus,  vol.  vi.,  p.  55. 

8  The  Sophist,  p.  261,  262.    The  following  little-known  and  decisive  pas- 
sage, which  we  have  translated  for  the  first  time,  must  be  cited : — "  Stranger. 
But  what,  by  Zeus  1  shall  we  be  so  easily  persuaded  that  in  reality,  motion, 
life,  soul,  intelligence,  do  not  belong  to  absolute  being?   that  this  being 
•neither  lives  nor  thinks,  that  this  being  remains  immobile,  immutable,  with- 
out having  part  in  august  and  holy  intelligence?—  Theatetus.    That  would 


ON   MYSTICISM.  115 

without  any  external  necessity,  and  for  the  sole  reason  that  he  is 
good.1  In  fine,  he  is  beauty  without  mixture,  unalterable,  im- 
mortal, that  makes  him  who  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  it  disdain 
all  earthly  beauties.2  The  beautiful,  the  absolute  good,  is  too 
dazzling  to  be  looked  on  directly  by  the  eye  of  mortal ;  it  must 
at  first  be  contemplated  in  the  images  that  reveal  it  to  us,  in 
truth,  in  beauty,  in  justice,  as  they  are  met  here  below,  and 
among  men,  as  the  eye  of  one  who  has  been  a  chained  captive 
from  infancy,  must  be  gradually  habituated  to  the  light  of  the 
sun.8  Our  reason,  enlightened  by  true  science,  can  perceive  this 
light  of  spirits ;  reason  rightly  led  can  go  to  God,  and  there  is 
no  need,  in  order  to  reach  him,  of  a  particular  and  mysterious 
faculty. 

Plotinus  erred  by  pushing  to  excess  the  Platonic  dialectics,  and 
by  extending  them  beyond  the  boundary  where  they  should  stop. 
In  Plato  they  terminate  at  ideas,  at  the  idea  of  the  good,  and 
produce  an  intelligent  and  good  God;  Plotinus  applies  them 
without  limit,  and  they  lead  him  into  an  abyss  of  mysticism.  If 
all  truth  is  in  the  general,  and  if  all  individuality  is  imperfection, 
it  follows,  that  as  long  as  we  are  able  to  generalize,  as  long  as  it 
is  possible  for  us  to  overlook  any  difference,  to  exclude  any  deter- 
mination, we  shall  not  be  at  the  limit  of  dialectics.  Its  last 
object,  then,  will  be  a  principle  without  any  determination.  It 
will  not  spare  in  God  being  itself.  In  fact,  if  we  say  that  God 
is  a  being,  by  the  side  of  and  above  being,  we  place  unity,  of 

be  consenting,  dear  Eleatus,  to  a  very  strange  assertion. — Stranger.  Or,  in- 
deed, shall  we  accord  to  this  being  intelligence  while  we  refuse  him  life  ? — 
Theatetus.  That  cannot  be. — Stranger.  Or,  again,  shall  we  say  that  there  is 
in  him  intelligence  and  life,  but  that  it  is  not  in  a  soul  that  he  possesses  them  ? 
— Theatetus.  And  how  could  he  possess  them  otherwise  I — Stranger.  In 
fine,  that,  endowed  with  intelligence,  soul,  and  life,  all  animated  as  he  is,  he 
remains  incomplete  immobility. — Theatetus.  All  that  seems  to  me  unrea- 
sonable." 

1  Timaus,  p.  119 :  "  Let  us  say  that  the  cause  which  led  the  supreme 
ordainer  to  produce  and  compose  this  universe  was,  that  he  was  good." 

*  Bouquet,  discourse  of  Diotimus,  vol.  vi.,  and  the  2d  part  of  this  vol.. 
The  Beautiful,  lecture  7. 

1  Republic.    Ibid. 


116  LECTURE    FIFTH. 

which  being  partakes,  and  which  it  cannot  disengage,  in  order  to 
consider  it  alone.  Being  is  not  here  simple,  since  it  is  at  once 
being  and  unity ;  unity  alone  is  simple,  for  one  cannot  go  beyond 
that.  And  still  when  we  say  unity,  we  determine  it.  True  ab- 
solute unity  must,  then,  be  something  absolutely  indeterminate, 
which  is  not,  which,  properly  speaking,  cannot  be  named,  the 
unnamable,  as  Plotinus  says.  This  principle,  which  exists  not, 
for  a  still  stronger  reason,  cannot  think,  for  all  thought  is  still  a 
determination,  a  manner  of  being.  So  being  and  thought  are 
excluded  from  absolute  unity.  If  Alexandrianism  admits  them, 
it  is  only  as  a  forfeiture,  a  degradation  of  unity.  Considered  in 
thought,  and  in  being,  the  supreme  principle  is  inferior  to  itself; 
only  in  the  pure  simplicity  of  its  indefinable  essence  is  it  the  last 
object  of  science,  and  the  last  term  of  perfection. 

In  order  to  enter  into  communication  with  such  a  God,  the 
ordinary  faculties  are  not  sufficient,  and  the  theodicea  of  the 
school  of  Alexandria  imposes  upon  it  a  quite  peculiar  psychology. 

In  the  truth  of  things,  reason  conceives  absolute  unity  as  an 
attribute  of  absolute  being,  but  not  as  something  in  itself,  or,  if  it 
considers  it  apart,  it  knows  that  it  considers  only  an  abstraction. 
Does  one  wish  to  make  absolute  unity  something  else  than  an 
attribute  of  an  absolute  being,  or  an  abstraction,  a  conception  of 
human  intelligence  ?  Reason  could  accept  nothing  more  on  any 
condition.  Will  this  barren  unity  be  the  object  of  love  ?  But 
love,  much  more  than  reason,  aspires  after  a  real  object.  One 
does  not  love  substance  in  general,  but  a  substance  that  possesses 
such  or  such  a  character.  In  human  friendships,  suppress  all  the 
qualities  of  a  person,  or  modify  them,  and  you  modify  or  sup- 
press the  love.  This  does  not  prove  that  you  do  not  love  this 
person ;  it  only  proves  that  the  person  is  not  for  you  without  his 
qualities. 

So  neither  reason  nor  love  can  attain  the  absolute  unity  of 
mysticism.  In  order  to  correspond  to  such  an  object,  there  must 
be  in  us  something  analogous  to  it,  there  must  be  a  mode  of 
knowing  that  implies  the  abolition  of  consciousness.  In  fact, 


ON  MYSTICISM.  117 

consciousness  is  the  sign  of  the  me,  that  is  to  say,  of  that  which 
is  most  determinate :  the  being  who  says,  me,  distinguishes  him- 
self essentially  from  every  other ;  that  is  for  us  the  type  itself  of 
individuality.  Consciousness  should  degrade  the  ideal  of  dialectic 
knowledge,  or  every  division,  every  determination  must  be  want- 
ing, in  order  to  respond  to  the  absolute  unity  of  its  object.  This 
mode  of  pure  and  direct  communication  with  God,  which  is  not 
reason,  which  is  not  love,  which  excludes  consciousness,  is  ecstasy 
(Ixratfij).  This  word,  which  Plotinus  first  applied  to  this  singu- 
lar state  of  the  soul,  expresses  this  separation  from  ourselves 
which  mysticism  exacts,  and  of  which  it  believes  man  capable. 
Man,  in  order  to  communicate  with  absolute  being,  must  go  out 
of  himself.  It  is  necessary  that  thought  should  reject  all  deter- 
minate thought,  and,  in  falling  back  within  its  own  depths,  should 
arrive  at  such  an  oblivion  of  itself,  that  consciousness  should  van- 
ish or  seem  to  vanish.  But  that  is  only  an  image  of  ecstasy ; 
what  it  is  in  itself,  no  one  knows ;  as  it  escapes  all  consciousness, 
it  escapes  memory,  escapes  reflection,  and  consequently  all  ex- 
pression, all  human  speech. 

This  philosophical  mysticism  rests  upon  a  radically  false  notion 
of  absolute  being.  By  dint  of  wishing  to  free  God  from  all  the 
conditions  of  finite  existence,  one  comes  to  deprive  him  of  all  the 
conditions  of  existence  itself;  one  has  such  a  fear  that  the  infi- 
nite may  have  something  in  common  with  the  finite,  that  he  does 
not  dare  to  recognize  that  being  is  common  to  both,  save  differ- 
ence of  degree,  as  if  all  that  is  not  were  not  nothingness  itself! 
Absolute  being  possesses  absolute  unity  without  any  doubt,  as  it 
possesses  absolute  intelligence ;  but,  once  more,  absolute  unity 
without  a  real  subject  of  inherence  is  destitute  of  all  reality. 
Real  and  determinate  are  synonyms.  What  constitutes  a  being 
is  its  special  nature,  its  essence.  A  being  is  itself  only  on  the 
condition  of  not  being  another ;  it  cannot  but  have  characteristic 
traits.  All  that  is,  is  such  or  such.  Difference  is  an  element  as 
essential  to  being  as  unity  itself.  If,  then,  reality  is  in  determi- 
nation, it  follows  that  God  is  the  most  determinate  of  beings. 


118  LECTURE    FIFTH. 

Aristotle  is  much,  more  Platonic  than  Plotinus,  when  he  says 
that  God  is  the  thought  of  thought,1  that  he  is  not  a  simple 
power,  but  a  power  effectively  acting,  meaning  thereby  that  God, 
to  be  perfect,  ought  to  have  nothing  in  himself  that  is  not  com- 
pleted. To  finite  nature  it  belongs  to  be,  in  a  certain  sense,  in- 
determinate, since  being  finite,  it  has  always  in  itself  powers  that 
are  not  realized ;  this  indetermination  diminishes  as  these  powers 
are  realized.  So  true  divine  unity  is  not  abstract  unity,  it  is  the 
precise  unity  of  perfect  being  in  which  every  thing  is  accom- 
plished. At  the  summit  of  existence,  still  more  than  at  its  low 
degree,  every  thing  is  determinate,  every  thing  is  developed, 
every  thing  is  distinct,  every  thing  is  one.  The  richness  of  deter- 
minations is  a  certain  sign  of  the  plenitude  of  being.  Reflection 
distinguishes  these  determinations  from  each  other,  but  it  is  not 
necessary  that  it  should  in  these  distinctions  see  the  limits.  In 
us,  for  example,  does  the  diversity  of  our  faculties  and  their 
richest  development  divide  the  me  and  alter  the  identity  and  the 
unity  of  the  person  ?  Does  each  one  of  us  believe  himself  less 
than  himself,  because  he  possesses  sensibility,  reason,  and  will  ? 
No,  surely.  It  is  the  same  with  God.  Not  having  employed  a 
sufficient  psychology,  Alexandrian  mysticism  imagined  that  di- 
versity of  attributes  is  incompatible  with  simplicity  of  essence, 
and  through  fear  of  corrupting  simple  and  pure  essence,  it  made 
of  it  an  abstraction.  By  a  senseless  scruple,  it  feared  that  God 
would  not  be  sufficiently  perfect,  if  it  left  him  all  his  perfections ; 
it  regards  them  as  imperfections,  being  as  a  degradation,  creation 
as  a  fall ;  and,  in  order  to  explain  man  and  the  universe,  it  is 
forced  to  put  in  God  what  it  calls  failings,  not  having  seen  that 
these  pretended  failings  are  the  very  signs  of  his  infinite  perfec- 
tion. 

The  theory  of  ecstasy  is  at  once  the  necessary  condition  and 
the  condemnation  of  the  theory  of  absolute  unity.     Without  ab- 


1  Book  xii.  of  the  Metaphysics.    De  la  Metaphysique  cF 'Aristotle,  2d  edition, 
p.  200,  etc. 


ON   MYSTICISM.  119 

solute  unity  as  the  direct  object  of  knowledge,  of  what  use  is 
ecstasy  in  the  subject  of  knowledge  ?  Ecstasy,  far  from  elevating 
man  to  God,  abases  him  below  man ;  for  it  effaces  in  him  thought, 
by  taking  away  its  condition,  which  is  consciousness.  To  suppress 
consciousness,  is  to  render  all  knowledge  impossible ;  it  is  not  to 
comprehend  the  perfection  of  this  mode  of  knowing,  wherein  the 
limitation  of  subject  and  object  gives  at  once  the  simplest,  most 
immediate,  and  most  determinate  knowledge.1 

The  Alexandrian  mysticism  is  the  most  learned  and  the  pro- 
foundest  of  all  known  mysticisms.  In  the  heights  of  abstraction 
where  it  loses  itself,  it  seems  very  far  from  popular  superstitions ; 
and  yet  the  school  of  Alexandria  unites  ecstatic  contemplation 
and  theurgy.  These  are  two  things,  in  appearance,  incompatible, 
but  they  pertain  to  the  same  principle,  to  the  pretension  of  di- 
rectly perceiving  what  inevitably  escapes  all  our  efforts.  On  the 
one  hand,  a  refined  mysticism  aspires  to  God  by  ecstasy;  on  the 
other,  a  gross  mysticism  thinks  to  seize  him  by  the  senses.  The 
processes,  the  faculties  employed,  differ,  but  the  foundation  is  the 
same,  and  from  this  common  foundation  necessarily  spring  the 
most  opposite  extravagances.  Apollonius  of  Tyanus  is  a  popu- 
lar Alexandrianist,  and  Jamblicus  is  Plotinus  become  a  priest, 
mystagogue,  and  hierophant.  A  new  worship  shone  forth  by 
miracles ;  the  ancient  worship  would  have  its  own  miracles,  and 


1  On  this  fundamental  point,  see  lecture  3,  in  this  vol. — 2d  Series,  vol.  i., 
lecture  6,  p.  97.  "  The  peculiarity  of  intelligence  is  not  the  power  of  know- 
ing, but  knowing  in  fact.  On  what  condition  is  there  intelligence  for  us  ? 
It  is  not  enough  that  there  should  be  in  us  a  principle  of  intelligence  ;  this 
principle  must  be  developed  and  exercised,  and  take  itself  as  the  object  of 
its  intelligence.  The  necessary  condition  of  intelligence  is  consciousness — 
that  is  to  say,  difference.  There  can  be  consciousness  only  where  there  are 
several  terms,  one  of  which  perceives  the  other,  and  at  the  same  time  per- 
ceives itself.  That  is  knowing,  and  knowing  self;  that  is  intelligence.  In- 
telligence without  consciousness  is  the  abstract  possibility  of  intelligence,  it 
is  not  real  intelligence.  Transfer  this  from  human  intelligence  to  divine  in- 
telligence, that  is  to  say,  refer  ideas,  I  mean  ideas  in  the  sense  of  Plato,  of  St. 
Augustine,  of  Bossuet,  of  Leibnitz,  to  the  only  intelligence  to  which  they 
can  belong,  and  you  will  have,  if  I  may  thus  express  myself,  the  life  of  the 
divine  intelligence  .  .  .  ,  etc." 


120  LECTURE   FIFTH. 

philosophers  boasted  that  they  could  make  the  divinity  appear 
before  other  men.  They  had  demons  for  themselves,  and,  in 
some  sort,  for  their  own  orders ;  the  gods  were  not  only  invoked, 
but  evoked.  Ecstasy  for  the  initiates,  theurgy  for  the  crowd. 

At  all  times  and  in  all  places,  these  two  mysticisms  have  given 
each  other  the  hand.  In  India  and  in  China,  the  schools  where 
the  most  subtile  idealism  is  taught,  are  not  far  from  pagodas  of 
the  most  abject  idolatry.  One  day  the  Bhagavad-Gita  or  Lao- 
tseu1  is  read,  an  indefinable  God  is  taught,  without  essential  and 
determinate  attributes ;  the  next  day  there  is  shown  to  the  people 
such  or  such  a  form,  such  or  such  a  manifestation  of  this  God, 
who,  not  having  a  form  that  belongs  to  him,  can  receive  all  forms, 
and  being  only  substance  in  itself,  is  necessarily  the  substance  of 
every  thing,  of  a  stone  and  a  drop  of  water,  of  a  dog,  a  hero,  and 
a  sage.  So,  in  the  ancient  world  under  Julien,  for  example,  the 
same  man  was  at  once  professor  in  the  school  of  Athens  and 
guardian  of  the  temple  of  Minerva  or  Cybele,  by  turns  obscuring 
the  Timceus  and  the  Republic  by  subtile  commentaries,  and  ex- 
hibiting to  the  eyes  of  the  multitude  sometimes  the  sacred  vale,4 
sometimes  the  shrine  of  the  good  goddess,3  and  in  either  function, 
as  priest  or  philosopher,  imposing  on  others  and  himself,  under- 
taking to  ascend  above  the  human  mind  and  falling  miserably 
below  it,  paying  in  some  sort  the  penalty  of  an  unintelligible 
metaphysics,  in  lending  himself  to  the  most  shameless  super- 
stitions. 

When  the  Christian  religion  triumphed,  it  brought  humanity 
under  a  discipline  that  puts  a  rein  upon  this  deplorable  mysticism. 
But  how  many  times  has  it  brought  back,  under  the  reign  of 
spiritual  religion,  all  the  extravagances  of  the  religions  of  nature  ! 
It  was  to  appear  especially  at  the  renaissance  of  the  schools  and 
of  the  genius  of  Paganism  in  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the 

1  Vol.  ii.  of  the  2d  Series,  Sketch  of  a  General  History  of  Philosophy,  lec- 
tures 5  and  6,  On  the  Indian  Philosophy. 

2  See  the  Euthyphron,  vol.  i.  of  our  translation. 

3  Lucien,  Apuleins,  Lucius  of  Patras. 


ON   MYSTICISM.  121 

human  mind  had  broken  with  the  philosophy  of  the  Middle  Age, 
without  yet  having  arrived  at  modern  philosophy.1  The  Paracel- 
suses  and  the  Von  Helmonts  renewed  the  Apolloniuses  and  the 
Jamblicuses,  abusing  some  chemical  and  medical  knowledge,  as 
the  former  had  abused  the  Socratic  and  Platonic  method,  altered 
in  its  character,  and  turned  from  its  true  object.  And  so,  in  the 
midst  of  the  eighteenth  century,  has  not  Swedenborg  united  in 
his  own  person  an  exalted  mysticism  and  a  sort  of  magic,  opening 
thus  the  way  to  those  senseless2  persons  who  contest  with  me  in 
the  morning  the  solidest  and  best-established  proofs  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  soul  and  God,  and  propose  to  me  in  the  evening  to 
make  me  see  otherwise  than  with  my  eyes,  and  to  make  me  hear 
otherwise  than  with  my  ears,  to  make  me  use  all  my  faculties 
otherwise  than  by  their  natural  organs,  promising  me  a  superhu- 
man science,  on  the  condition  of  first  losing  consciousness,  thought, 
liberty,  memory,  all  that  constitutes  me  an  intelligent  and  moral 
being.  I  should  know  all,  then,  but  at  the  cost  of  knowing 
nothing  that  I  should  know.  I  should  elevate  myself  to  a  mar- 
vellous world,  which,  awakened  and  in  a  natural  state,  I  am  not 
even  able  to  suspect,  of  which  no  remembrance  will  remain  to  me : 
— a  mysticism  at  once  gross  and  chimerical,  which  perverts  both 
psychology  and  physiology ;  an  imbecile  ecstasy,  renewed  without 
genius  from  the  Alexandrine  ecstasy ;  an  extravagance  which  has 
not  even  the  merit  of  a  little  novelty,  and  which  history  has  seen 
reappearing  at  all  epochs  of  ambition  and  impotence. 

This  is  what  we  come  to  when  we  wish  to  go  beyond  the  con- 
ditions imposed  upon  human  nature.     Charron  first  said,  and 


*2d  Series,  vol.  ii.,  Sketch  of  a  General  History  of  Philosophy,  lecture  10, 
On,  the  Philosophy  of  the  Renaissance. 

*  One  was  then  ardently  occupied  with  magnetism,  and  more  than  a  mag- 
netizer,  half  a  materialist,  half  a  visionary,  pretended  to  convert  us  to  a  sys- 
tem of  perfect  clairvoyance  of  soul,  obtained  by  means  of  artificial  sleep. 
Alas !  the  same  follies  are  now  renewed.  Conjunctions  are  the  fashion. 
Spirits  are  interrogated,  and  they  respond !  Only  let  there  be  conscious- 
ness that  one  does  not  interrogate,  and  superstition  alone  counterpoises 
skepticism. 

6 


122  LECTURE  FIFTH. 

after  him  Pascal  repeated  it,  that  whoever  would  become  an  angel 
becomes  a  beast.  The  remedy  for  all  these  follies  is  a  severe 
theory  of  reason,  of  what  it  can  and  what  it  cannot  do;  of 
reason  enveloped  first  in  the  exercise  of  the  senses,  than  elevating 
itself  to  universal  and  necessary  ideas,  referring  them  to  their 
principle,  to  a  being  infinite  and  at  the  same  time  real  and  sub- 
stantial, whose  existence  it  conceives,  but  whose  nature  it  is 
always  interdicted  to  penetrate  and  comprehend.  Sentiment  ac- 
companies and  vivifies  the  sublime  intuitions  of  reason,  but  we 
must  not  confound  these  two  orders  of  facts,  much  less  smother 
reason  in  sentiment.  Between  a  finite  being  like  man  and  God, 
absolute  and  infinite  substance,  there  is  the  double  intermediary 
of  that  magnificent  universe  open  to  our  gaze,  and  of  those  mar- 
vellous truths  which  reason  conceives,  but  has  not  made  more 
than  the  eye  makes  the  beauties  it  perceives.  The  only  means 
that  is  given  us  of  elevating  ourselves  to  the  Being  of  beings, 
without  being  dazzled  and  bewildered,  is  to  approach  him  by  the 
aid  of  a  divine  intermediary ;  that  is  to  say,  to  consecrate  our- 
selves to  the  study  and  the  love  of  truth,  and,  as  we  shall  soon 
see,  to  the  contemplation  and  reproduction  of  the  beautiful,  espe- 
cially to  the  practice  of  the  good. 


PART    SECOND. 


THE  BEAUTIFUL. 
LECTURE    YI. 

THE   BEAUTIFUL  IN  THE   MIND   OF  MAN. 

The  method  that  must  govern  researches  on  the  beautiful  and  art  is,  as  in 
the  investigation  of  the  true,  to  commence  by  psychology. — Faculties  of 
the  soul  that  unite  in  the  perception  of  the  beautiful. — The  senses  give 
only  the  agreeable ;  reason  alone  gives  the  idea  of  the  beautiful. — Refuta- 
tion of  empiricism,  that  confounds  the  agreeable  and  the  beautiful.— Pre- 
eminence of  reason. — Sentiment  of  the  beautiful ;  different  from  sensation 
and  desire. — Distinction  between  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  and  that 
of  the  sublime. — Imagination. — Influence  of  sentiment  on  imagination. — 
Influence  of  imagination  on  sentiment. — Theory  of  taste. 

LET  us  recall  in  a  few  words  the  results  at  which  we  have 
arrived. 

Two  exclusive  schools  are  opposed  to  each  other  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century ;  we  have  combated  both,  and  each  by  the  other. 
To  empiricism  we  have  opposed  the  insufficiency  of*  sensation, 
and  its  own  inevitable  necessity  to  idealism.  We  have  admitted, 
with  Locke  and  Condillac,  in  regard  to  the  origin  of  knowledge, 
particular  and  contingent  ideas,  which  we  owe  to  the  senses  and 
consciousness ;  and  above  the  senses  and  consciousness,  the  direct 
sources  of  all  particular  ideas,  we  have  recognized,  with  Reid 
and  Kant,  a  special  faculty,  different  from  sensation  and  conscious- 
ness, but  developed  with  them, — reason,  the  lofty  source  of  uni- 
versal and  necessary  truths.  We  have  established,  against  Kant, 


124  LECTUEE   SIXTH. 

the  absolute  authority  of  reason,  and  the  truths  which  it  discovers. 
Then,  the  truths  that  reason  revealed  to  us  have  themselves  re- 
vealed to  us  their  eternal  principle, — God.  Finally,  this  rational 
spiritualism,  which  is  both  the  faith  of  the  human  race  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  greatest  minds  of  antiquity  and  modern  times,  we 
have  carefully  distinguished  from  a  chimerical  and  dangerous 
mysticism.  Thus  the  necessity  of  experience  and  the  necessity  of 
reason,  the  necessity  of  a  real  and  infinite  being  which  is  the  first 
and  last  foundation  of  truth,  a  severe  distinction  between  spirit- 
ualism and  mysticism,  are  the  great  principles  which  we  have 
been  able  to  .gather  from  the  first  part  of  this  course. 

The  second  part,  the  study  of  the  beautiful,  will  give  us  the 
same  results  elucidated  and  aggrandized  by  a  new  application. 

It  was  the  eighteenth  century  that  introduced,  or  rather  brought 
back  into  philosophy,  investigations  on  the  beautiful  and  art,  so 
familiar  to  Plato  and  Aristotle,  but  which  scholasticism  had  not 
entertained,  to  which  our  great  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  remained  almost  a  stranger.1  One  comprehends  that 
it  did  not  belong  to  the  empirical  school  to  revive  this  noble  part 
of  philosophic  science.  Locke  and  Condillac  did  not  leave  a 
chapter,  not  even  a  single  page,  on  the  beautiful.  Their  follow- 
ers treated  beauty  with  the  same  disdain ;  not  knowing  very  well 
how  to  explain  it  in  their  system,  they  found  it  more  convenient 
not  to  perceive  it  at  all.  Diderot,  it  is  true,  had  an  enthusiasm 
for  beauty  and  art,  but  enthusiasm  was  never  so  ill  placed.  Di- 
derot had  genius ;  but,  as  Voltaire  said  of  him,  his  was  a  head 
in  which  every  thing  fermented  without  coming  to  maturity.  He 
scattered  here  and  there  a  mass  of  ingenious  and  often  contradic- 
tory perceptions  ;  he  has  no  principles  ;  he  abandons  himself  to 
the  impression  of  the  moment ;  he  knows  not  what  the  ideal  is ; 
he  delights  in  a  kind  of  nature,  at  once  common  and  mannered, 


1  Except  the  estimable  Essay  on  the  Beautiful,  by  P.  Andre,  a  disciple  of 
Malebranche,  whose  life  was  considerably  prolonged  into  the  eighteenth 
century.  On  P.  Andre,  see  3d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  Modern  Philosophy,  p. 
207,  516. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE   MIND   OF  MAN.  125 

such  as  one  might  expect  from  the  author  of  the  Interpretation 
de  la  Nature,  the  Pere  de  Famille,  the  Neveu  de  Rameau,  arid 
Jacques  le  Fataliste.  Diderot  is  a  fatalist  in  art  as  well  as  in 
philosophy  ;  he  belongs  to  his  times  and  his  school,  with  a  grain 
of  poetry,  sensibility,  and  imagination.1  It  was  worthy  of  the 
Scotch2  school  and  Kant3  to  give  a  place  to  the  beautiful  in  their 
doctrine.  They  considered  it  in  the  soul  and  in  nature ;  but  they 
did  not  even  touch  the  difficult  question  of  the  reproduction  of 
the  beautiful  by  the  genius  of  man.  We  will  try  to  embrace  this 
great  subject  in  its  whole  extent,  and  we  are  about  to  offer  at 
least  a  sketch  of  a  regular  and  complete  theory  of  beauty  and  art. 

Let  us  begin  by  establishing  well  the  method  that  must  preside 
over  these  investigations. 

One  can  study  the  beautiful  in  two  ways : — either  out  of  us,  in 
itself  and  in  the  objects,  whatever  they  may  be,  that  bear  its  im- 
press ;  or  in  the  mind  of  man,  in  the  faculties  that  attain  it,  in 
the  ideas  or  sentiments  that  it  excites  in  us.  Now,  the  true 
method,  which  must  now  be  familiar  to  you,  makes  setting  out 
from  man  to  arrive  at  things  a  law  for  us.  Therefore  psychologi- 
cal analysis  will  here  again  be  our  point  of  departure,  and  the 
study  of  the  state  of  the  soul  in  presence  of  the  beautiful  will  pre- 
pare us  for  that  of  the  beautiful  considered  in  itself  and  its  objects. 

Let  us  interrogate  the  soul  in  the  presence  of  beauty. 

Is  it  not  an  incontestable  fact  that  before  certain  objects,  under 
very  different  circumstances,  we  pronounce  the  following  judg- 
ment : — This  object  is  beautiful  ?  This  affirmation  is  not  always 
explicit.  Sometimes  it  manifests  itself  only  by  a  cry  of  admira- 
tion ;  sometimes  it  silently  rises  in  the  mind  that  scarcely  has  a 
consciousness  of  it.  The  forms  of  this  phenomenon  vary,  but  the 


1  See  in  the  works  of  Diderot,  Pensees  sur  la  Sculpture,  les  Salons,  etc. 

a  See  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  explained  and  estimated,  the  theories  of  Hutch- 
eson  and  Eeid. 

2  The  theory  of  Kant  is  found  in  the  Critique  of  Judgment,  and  in  the  Ob- 
servations on  the  Sentiment  of  the  Beautiful  and  the  Sublime.    See  the  excel- 
lent translation  made  by  M.  Barny,  2  vols.,  1846. 


126  LECTUBE   SIXTH. 

phenomenon  is  attested  by  the  most  common  and  most  certain 
observation,  and  all  languages  bear  witness  of  it. 

Although  sensible  objects,  with  most  men,  oftenest  provoke 
the  judgment  of  the  beautiful,  they  do  not  alone  possess  this  ad- 
vantage ;  the  domain  of  beauty  is  more  extensive  than  the  domain 
of  the  physical  world  exposed  to  our  view ;  it  has  no  bounds  but 
those  of  entire  nature,  and  of  the  soul  and  genius  of  man.  Before 
an  heroic  action,  by  the  remembrance  of  a  great  sacrifice ;  even  by 
the  thought  of  the  most  abstract  truths  firmly  united  with  each 
other  in  a  system  admirable  at  once  for  its  simplicity  and  its  pro- 
ductiveness ;  finally,  before  objects  of  another  order,  before  the 
works  of  art,  this  same  phenomenon  is  produced  in  us.  We 
recognize  in  all  these  objects,  however  different,  a  common  quality 
in  regard  to  which  our  judgment  is  pronounced,  and  this  quality 
we  call  beauty. 

The  philosophy  of  sensation,  in  faithfulness  to  itself,  should  have 
attempted  to  reduce  the  beautiful  to  the  agreeable. 

Without  doubt,  beauty  is  almost  always  agreeable  to  the  senses, 
or  at  least  it  must  not  wound  them.  Most  of  our  ideas  of  the 
beautiful  come  to  us  by  sight  and  hearing,  and  all  the  arts,  with- 
out exception,  are  addressed  to  the  soul  through  the  body.  An 
object  which  makes  us  suffer,  were  it  the  most  beautiful  in  the 
world,  very  rarely  appears  to  us  such.  Beauty  has  little  influence 
over  a  soul  occupied  with  grief. 

But  if  an  agreeable  sensation  often  accompanies  the  idea  of  the 
beautiful,  we  must  not  conclude  that  one  is  the  other. 

Experience  testifies  that  all  agreeable  things  do  not  appear 
beautiful,  and  that,  among  agreeable  things,  those  which  are 
most  so  are  not  the  most  beautiful, — a  sure  sign  that  the  agree- 
able is  not  the  beautiful ;  for  if  one  is  identical  with  the  other, 
they  should  never  be  separated,  but  should  always  be  commensu- 
rate with  each  other. 

Far  from  this,  whilst  all  our  senses  give  us  agreeable  sensa- 
tions, only  two  have  the  privilege  of  awakening  in  us  the  idea  of 
beauty.  Does  one  ever  say :  This  is  a  beautiful  taste,  this  is  a 


THE  BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE   MIND   OF   MAN.  127 

beautiful  smell  ?  Nevertheless,  one  should  say  it,  if  the  beautiful 
is  the  agreeable.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  certain  pleasures 
of  odor  and  taste  that  move  sensibility  more  than  the  greatest 
beauties  of  nature  and  art ;  and  even  among  the  perceptions  of 
hearing  and  sight,  those  are  not  always  the  most  vivid  that  most 
excite  in  us  the  idea  of  beauty.  Do  not  pictures,  ordinary  in 
coloring,  often  move  us  more  deeply  than  many  dazzling  produc- 
tions, more  seductive  to  the  eye,  less  touching  to  the  soul  ?  I 
say  farther ;  sensation  not  only  does  not  produce  the  idea  of  the 
beautiful,  but  sometimes  stifles  it.  Let  an  artist  occupy  himself 
with  the  reproduction  of  voluptuous  forms;  while  pleasing  the 
senses,  he  disturbs,  he  repels  in  us  the  chaste  and  pure  idea  of 
beauty.  The  agreeable  is  not,  then,  the  measure  of  the  beautiful, 
since  in  certain  cases  it  effaces  it  and  makes  us  forget  it ;  it  is  not, 
then,  the  beautiful,  since  it  is  found,  and  in  the  highest  degree, 
where  the  beautiful  is  not. 

This  conducts  us  to  the  essential  foundation  of  the  distinction 
between  the  idea  of  the  beautiful  and  the  sensation  of  the  agree- 
able, to  wit,  the  difference  already  explained  between  sensibility 
and  reason. 

When  an  object  makes  you  experience  an  agreeable  sensation, 
if  one  asks  you  why  this  object  is  agreeable  to  you,  you  can 
answer  nothing,  except  that  such  is  your  impression ;  and  if  one 
informs  you  that  this  same  object  produces  upon  others  a  differ- 
ent impression  and  displeases  them,  you  are  not  much  astonished, 
because  you  know  that  sensibility  is  diverse,  and  that  sensations 
must  not  be  disputed.  Is  it  the  same  when  an  object  is  not  only 
agreeable  to  you,  but  when  you  judge  that  it  is  beautiful  ?  You 
pronounce,  for  example,  that  this  figure  is  noble  and  beautiful, 
that  this  sunrise  or  sunset  is  beautiful,  that  disinterestedness  and 
devotion  are  beautiful,  that  virtue  is  beautiful ;  if  one  contests 
with  you  the  truth  of  these  judgments,  then  you  are  not  as  ac- 
commodating as  you  were  just  now;  you  do  not  accept  the 
dissent  as  an  inevitable  effect  of  different  sensibilities,  you  no 
longer  appeal  to  your  sensibility  which  naturally  terminates  in 


128  LECTURE    SIXTH. 

you,  you  appeal  to  an  authority  which  is  made  for  others  as  well 
as  you,  that  of  reason ;  you  believe  that  you  have  the  right  of 
accusing  him  with  error  who  contradicts  your  judgment,  for  here 
your  judgment  rests  no  longer  on  something  variable  and  indi- 
vidual, like  an  agreeable  or  painful  sensation.  The  agreeable  is 
confined  for  us  within  the  inclosure  of  our  own  organization, 
where  it  changes  every  moment,  according  to  the  perpetual  revo- 
lutions of  this  organization,  according  to  health  and  sickness,  the 
state  of  the  atmosphere,  that  of  our  nerves,  etc.  But  it  is  not  so 
with  beauty ;  beauty,  like  truth,  belongs  to  none  of  us ;  no  one 
has  the  right  to  dispose  of  it  arbitrarily,  and  when  we  say :  this 
is  true,  this  is  beautiful,  it  is  no  longer  the  particular  and  varia- 
ble impression  of  our  sensibility  that  we  express,  it  is  the  absolute 
judgment  that  reason  imposes  on  all  men. 

Confound  reason  and  sensibility,  reduce  the  idea  of  the  beauti- 
ful to  the  sensation  of  the  agreeable,  and  taste  no  longer  has  a 
law.  If  a  person  says  to  me,  in  the  presence  of  the  Apollo  Bel- 
videre,  that  he  feels  nothing  more  agreeable  than  in  presence  of 
any  other  statue,  that  it  does  not  please  him  at  all,  that  he  does 
not  feel  its  beauty,  I  cannot  dispute  his  impression ;  but  if  this 
person  thence  concludes  that  the  Apollo  is  not  beautiful,  I  proudly 
contradict  him,  and  declare  that  he  is  deceived.  Good  taste  is 
distinguished  from  bad  taste ;  but  what  does  this  distinction  sig- 
nify, if  the  judgment  of  the  beautiful  is  resolved  into  a  sensation  ? 
You  say  to  me  that  I  have  no  taste.  What  does  that  mean  ? 
Have  I  not  senses  like  you  ?  Does  not  the  object  which  you 
admire  act  upon  me  as  well  as  upon  you  ?  Is  not  the  impression 
which  I  feel  as  real  as  that  which  you  feel  ?  Whence  comes  it, 
then,  that  you  are  right, — you  who  only  give  expression  to  the 
impression  which  you  feel,  and  that  I  am  wrong, — I  who  do  pre- 
cisely the  same  thing  ?  Is  it  because  those  who  feel  like  you  are 
more  numerous  than  those  who  feel  like  me?  But  here  the 
number  of  voices  means  nothing  ?  The  beautiful  being  defined 
as  that  which  produces  on  the  senses  an  agreeable  impression,  a 
thing  that  pleases  a  single  man,  though  it  were  frightfully  ugly 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE   MIND    OF   MAN.  129 

in  the  eyes  of  all  the  rest  of  the  human  race,  must,  nevertheless, 
and  very  legitimately,  be  called  beautiful  by  him  who  receives 
from  it  an  agreeable  impression,  for,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  it 
satisfies  the  definition.  There  is,  then,  no  true  beauty ;  there  are 
only  relative  and  changing  beauties,  beauties  of  circumstance, 
custom,  fashion,  and  all  these  beauties,  however  different,  will 
have  a  right  to  the  same  respect,  provided  they  meet  sensibilities 
to  which  they  are  agreeable.  And  as  there  is  nothing  in  this 
world,  in  the  infinite  diversity  of  our  dispositions,  which  may  not 
please  some  one,  there  will  be  nothing  that  is  not  beautiful ;  orr 
to  speak  more  truly,  there  will  be  nothing  either  beautiful  or  ugly, 
and  the  Hottentot  Venus  will  equal  the  Venus  de  Medici.  The 
absurdity  of  the  consequences  demonstrates  the  absurdity  of  the 
principle.  But  there  is  only  one  means  of  escaping  these  conse- 
quences, which  is  to  repudiate  the  principle,  and  recognize  the 
judgment  of  the  beautiful  as  an  absolute  judgment,  and,  as  such, 
entirely  different  from  sensation. 

Finally,  and  this  is  the  last  rock  of  empiricism,  is  there  in  us 
only  the  idea  of  an  imperfect  and  finite  beauty,  and  while  we  are 
admiring  the  real  beauties  that  nature  furnishes,  are  we  not  ele- 
vating ourselves  to  the  idea  of  a  superior  beauty,  which  Plato, 
with  great  excellence  of  expression,  calls  the  Idea  of  the  beauti- 
ful, which,  after  him,  all  men  of  delicate  taste,  all  true  artists 
call  the  Ideal  ?  If  we  establish  degrees  in  the  beauty  of  things, 
is  it  not  because  Ave  compare  them,  often  without  noticing  it,  with 
this  ideal,  which  is  to  us  the  measure  and  rule  of  all  our  judg- 
ments in  regard  to  particular  beauties  ?  How  could  this  idea  of 
absolute  beauty  enveloped  in  all  our  judgments  on  the  beautiful. 
— how  could  this  ideal  beauty,  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  not 
to  conceive,  be  revealed  to  us  by  sensation,  by  a  faculty  variable 
and  relative  like  the  objects  that  it  perceives  ? 

The  philosophy  which  deduces  all  our  ideas  from  the  senses 
falls  to  the  ground,  then,  before  the  idea  of  the  beautiful.  It  re- 
mains to  see  whether  this  idea  can  be  better  explained  by  means 
of  sentiment,  which  is  different  from  sensation,  which  so  nearly 

6* 


130  LECTURE    SIXTH. 

resembles  reason  that  good  judges  have  often  taken  it  for  reason, 
and  have  made  it  the  principle  of  the  idea  of  the  beautiful  as 
well  as  that  of  the  good.  It  is  already  a  progress,  without  doubt, 
to  go  from  sensation  to  sentiment,  and  Hutcheson  and  Smith1 
are  in  our  eyes  very  different  philosophers  from  Condillac  and 
Helvetius ; 2  but  we  believe  that  we  have  sufficiently  established8 
that,  in  confounding  sentiment  with  reason,  we  deprive  it  of  its 
foundation  and  rule,  that  sentiment,  particular  and  variable  in  its 
nature,  different  to  different  men,  and  in  each  man  continually 
changing,  cannot  be  sufficient  for  itself.  Nevertheless,  if  senti- 
ment is  not  a  principle,  it  is  a  true  and  important  fact,  and,  after 
having  distinguished  it  well  from  reason,  we  ourselves  proceed  to 
elevate  it  far  above  sensation,  and  elucidate  the  important  part  it 
plays  in  the  perception  of  beauty. 

Place  yourself  before  an  object  of  nature,  wherein  men  recog- 
nize beauty,  and  observe  what  takes  place  within  you  at  the  sight 
of  this  object.  Is  it  not  certain  that,  at  the  same  time  that  you 
judge  that  it  is  beautiful,  you  also  feel  its  beauty,  that  is  to  say, 
that  you  experience  at  the  sight  of  it  a  delightful  emotion,  and 
that  you  are  attracted  towards  this  object  by  a  sentiment  of  sym- 
pathy and  love  ?  In  other  cases  you  judge  otherwise,  and  feel 
an  opposite  sentiment.  Aversion  accompanies  the  judgment  of 
the  ugly,  as  love  accompanies  the  judgment  of  the  beautiful. 
And  this  sentiment  is  awakened  not  only  in  presence  of  the  ob- 
jects of  nature  :  all  objects,  whatever  they  may  be,  that  we  judge 
to  be  ugly  or  beautiful,  have  the  power  to  excite  in  us  this  senti- 
ment. Vary  the  circumstances  as  much  as  you  please,  place  me 
before  an  admirable  edifice  or  before  a  beautiful  landscape ;  repre- 
sent to  my  mind  the  great  discoveries  of  Descartes  and  Newton, 


1  On  Hutcheson  and  Smith,  their  merits  and  defects,  the  part  of  truth  and 
the  part  of  error,  which  their  philosophy  contains,  see  the  detailed  lectures 
which  we  have  devoted  to  them,  1st  Series,  vol.  iv. 

"  See  the  exposition  and  refutation  of  the  doctrine  of  Condillac  and  Hel- 
vetius, Ibid.,  vol.  iii. 

*  See  lecture  5,  in  this  vol. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE   MIND   OF   MAN.  131 

the  exploits  of  the  great  Conde,  the  virtue  of  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul ;  elevate  me  still  higher ;  awaken  in  me  the  obscure  and  too 
much  forgotten  idea  of  the  infinite  being;  whatever  you  do,  as 
often  as  you  give  birth  within  me  to  the  idea  of  the  beautiful, 
you  give  me  an  internal  and  exquisite  joy,  always  followed  by  a 
sentiment  of  love  for  the  object  that  caused  it 

The  more  beautiful  the  object  is,  the  more  lively  is  the  joy 
which  it  gives  the  soul,  and  the  more  profound  is  the  love  with- 
out being  passionate.  In  admiration  judgment  rules,  but  ani- 
mated by  sentiment.  Is  admiration  increased  to  the  degree  of 
impressing  upon  the  soul  an  emotion,  an  ardor  that  seems  to  ex- 
ceed the  limits  of  human  nature  ?  this  state  of  the  soul  is  called 
enthusiasm : 

"  Est  Deus  in  nobis,  agitante  calescimus  illo." 

The  philosophy  of  sensation  explains  sentiment,  as  well  as  the 
idea  of  the  beautiful,  only  by  changing  its  nature.  It  confounds 
it  with  agreeable  sensation,  and,  consequently,  for  it  the  love  of 
beauty  can  be  nothing  but  desire.  There  is  no  theory  more  con- 
tradicted by  facts. 

What  is  desire  ?  It  is  an  emotion  of  the  soul  which  has,  for 
its  avowed  or  secret  end,  possession.  Admiration  is  in  its  nature 
respectful,  whilst  desire  tends  to  profane  its  object. 

Desire  is  the  offspring  of  need.  It  supposes,  then,  in  him  who 
experiences  it,  a  want,  a  defect,  and,  to  a  certain  point,  suffering. 
The  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  is  to  itself  its  own  satisfaction. 

Desire  is  burning,  impetuous,  sad.  The  sentiment  of  the  beau- 
tiful, free  from  all  desire,  and  always  without  fear,  elevates  and 
warms  the  soul,  and  may  transport  it  even  to  enthusiasm,  with- 
out making  it  know  the  troubles  of  passion.  The  artist  sees  only 
the  beautiful  where  the  sensual  man  sees  only  the  alluring  and 
the  frightful.  On  a  vessel  tossed  by  a  tempest,  while  the  passen- 
gers tremble  at  the  sight  of  the  threatening  waves,  and  at  the 
sound  of  the  thunder  that  breaks  over  their  heads,  the  artist  re- 
mains absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  the  sublime  spectacle. 


132  LECTURE   SIXTH. 

Vernet  has  himself  lashed  to  the  mast  in  order  to  contemplate 
for  a  longer  time  the  storm  in  its  majestic  and  terrible  beauty. 
When  he  knows  fear,  when  he  participates  in  the  common  feel- 
ing, the  artist  vanishes,  there  no  more  remains  any  thing  but  the 
man. 

The  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  is  so  far  from  being  desire,  that 
each  excludes  the  other.  Let  me  take  a  common  example.  Be- 
fore a  table  loaded  with  meats  and  delicious  wines,  the  desire  of 
enjoyment  is  awakened,  but  not  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful. 
Suppose  that  if,  instead  of  thinking  of  the  pleasures  which  all 
these  things  spread  before  my  eyes  promise  me,  I  only  take  no- 
tice of  the  manner  in  which  they  are  arranged  and  set  upon  the 
table,  and  the  order  of  the  feast,  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful 
might  in  some  degree  be  produced  ;  but  surely  this  will  be 
neither  the  need  nor  the  desire  of  appropriating  this  symmetry, 
this  order. 

It  is  the  property  of  beauty  not  to  irritate  and  inflame  desire, 
but  to  purify  and  ennoble  it.  The  more  beautiful  a  woman  is, — 
I  do  not  mean  that  common  and  gross  beauty  which  Reubens  in 
vain  animates  with  his  brilliant  coloring,  but  that  ideal  beauty 
which  antiquity  and  Raphael  understood  so  well, — the  more,  at 
the  sight  of  this  noble  creature  is  desire  tempered  by  an  exquisite 
and  delicate  sentiment,  and  is  sometimes  even  replaced  by  a  dis- 
interested worship.  If  the  Venus  of  the  Capitol,  or  the  Saint 
Cecilia,  excites  in  you  sensual  desires,  you  are  not  made  to  feel 
the  beautiful.  So  the  true  artist  addresses  himself  less  to  the 
senses  than  to  the  soul;  in  painting  beauty  he  only  seeks  to 
awaken  in  us  sentiment ;  and  when  he  has  carried  this  sentiment 
as  far  as  enthusiasm,  he  has  obtained  the  last  triumph  of  art. 

The  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  is,  therefore,  a  special  sentiment, 
as  the  idea  of  the  beautiful  is  a  simple  idea.  But  is  this  senti- 
ment, one  in  itself,  manifested  only  in  a  single  way,  and  applied 
only  to  a  single  kind  of  beauty  ?  Here  again — here,  as  always 
— let  us  interrogate  experience. 

When  we  have  before  our  eyes  an  object  whose  forms  are  per- 


THE  BEAUTIFUL  IN  THE  MIND  OF  MAN.      133 

fectly  determined,  and  the  whole  easy  to  embrace, — a  beautiful 
flower,  a  beautiful  statue,  an  antique  temple  of  moderate  size, — 
each  of  our  faculties  attaches  itself  to  this  object,  and  rests  upon 
it  with  an  unalloyed  satisfaction.  Our  senses  easily  perceive  its 
details ;  our  reason  seizes  the  happy  harmony  of  all  its  parts. 
Should  this  object  disappear,  we  can  distinctly  represent  it  to 
ourselves,  so  precise  and  fixed  are  its  forms.  The  soul  in  this 
contemplation  feels  again  a  sweet  and  tranquil  joy,  a  sort  of  ef- 
florescence. 

Let  us  consider,  on  the  other  hand,  an  object  with  vague  and 
indefinite  forms,  which  may  nevertheless  be  very  beautiful :  the 
impression  which  we  experience  is  without  doubt  a  pleasure  still, 
but  it  is  a  pleasure  of  a  different  order.  This  object  does  not  call 
forth  all  our  powers  like  the  first.  Reason  conceives  it,  but  the 
senses  do  not  perceive  the  whole  of  it,  and  imagination  does  not 
distinctly  represent  it  to  itself.  The  senses  and  the  imagination 
try  in  vain  to  attain  its  last  limits ;  our  faculties  are  enlarged,  are 
inflated,  thus  to  speak,  in  order  to  embrace  it,  but  it  escapes  and 
surpasses  them.  The  pleasure  that  we  feel  comes  from  the  very 
magnitude  of  the  object ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  this  magnitude 
produces  in  us  I  know  not  what  melancholy  sentiment,  because 
it  is  disproportionate  to  us.  At  the  sight  of  the  starry  heavens, 
of  the  vast  sea,  of  gigantic  mountains,  admiration  is  mingled 
with  sadness.  These  objects,  in  reality  finite,  like  the  world  it- 
self, seem  to  us  infinite,  in  our  want  of  power  to  comprehend 
their  immensity,  and,  resembling  what  is  truly  without  bounds, 
they  awaken  in  us  the  idea  of  the  infinite,  that  idea  which 
at  once  elevates  and  confounds  our  intelligence.  The  corre- 
sponding sentiment  which  the  soul  experiences  is  an  austere 
pleasure. 

In  order  to  render  the  difference  which  we  wish  to  mark  more 
perceptible,  examples  may  be  multiplied.  Are  you  affected  in 
the  same  way  at  the  sight  of  a  meadow,  variegated  in  its  rather 
limited  dimensions,  whose  extent  the  eye  can  easily  take  in,  and 
at  the  aspect  of  an  inaccessible  mountain,  at  the  foot  of  which 


134  LECTURE   SIXTH. 

the  ocean  breaks  ?  Do  the  sweet  light  of  day  and  a  melodious 
voice  produce  upon  you  the  same  effect  as'  darkness  and  silence  ? 
In  the  intellectual  and  moral  order,  are  you  moved  in  the  same 
way  when  a  rich  and  good  man  opens  his  purse  to  the  indigent, 
and  when  a  magnanimous  man  gives  hospitality  to  his  enemy, 
and  saves  him  at  the  peril  of  his  own  life  ?  Take  some  light 
poetry  in  which  measure,  spirit,  and  grace,  everywhere  predomi- 
nate ;  take  an  ode,  and  especially  an  epistle  of  Horace,  or  some 
small  verses  of  Voltaire,  and  compare  them  with  the  Iliad,  or 
those  immense  Indian  poems  that  are  filled  with  marvellous 
events,  wherein  the  highest  metaphysics  are  united  to  recitals  by 
turns  graceful  or  pathetic,  those  poems  that  have  more  than  two 
hundred  thousand  verses,  whose  personages  are  gods  or  symbolic 
beings;  and  see  whether  the  impressions  that  you  experience 
will  be  the  same.  As  a  last  example,  suppose,  on  the  one  hand, 
a  writer  who,  with  two  or  three  strokes  of  the  pen,  sketches  an 
analysis  of  intelligence,  agreeable  and  simple,  but  without  depth, 
and,  on  the  other,  a  philosopher  who  engages  in  a  long  labor  in 
order  to  arrive  at  the  most  rigorous  decomposition  of  the  faculty 
of  knowing,  and  unfolds  to  you  a  long  chain  of  principles  and 
consequences, — read  the  Traitg  des  Sensations  and  the  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason,  and,  even  leaving  out  of  the  account  the  truth 
and  the  falsehood  they  may  contain,  with  reference  solely  to  the 
beautiful,  compare  your  impressions. 

These  are,  then,  two  very  different  sentiments ;  different  names 
have  also  been  given  them ;  one  has  been  more  particularly 
called  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful,  the  other  that  of  the  sub- 
lime. 

In  order  to  complete  the  study  of  the  different  faculties  that 
enter  into  the  perception  of  beauty,  after  reason  and  sentiment, 
it  remains  to  us  to  speak  of  a  faculty  not  less  necessary,  which 
animates  them  and  vivifies  them, — imagination. 

When  sensation,  judgment,  and  sentiment  have  been  produced 
by  the  occasion  of  an  external  object,  they  are  reproduced  even 
in  the  absence  of  this  object ;  this  is  memory. 


THE  BEAUTIFUL  IN  THE  MIND  OF  MAN.       135 

Memory  is  double : — not  only  do  I  remember  that  I  have  been 
in  the  presence  of  a  certain  object,  but  I  represent  to  myself  this 
absent  object  as  it  was,  as  I  have  seen,  felt,  and  judged  it : — the 
remembrance  is  then  an  image.  In  this  last  case,  memory  has 
been  called  by  some  philosophers  imaginative  memory.  Such  is 
the  foundation  of  imagination ;  but  imagination  is  something 
more  still. 

The  mind,  applying  itself  to  the  images  furnished  by  memory, 
decomposes  them,  chooses  between  their  different  traits,  and 
forms  of  them  new  images.  Without  this  new  power,  imagina- 
tion would  be  captive  in  the  circle  of  memory. 

The  gift  of  being  strongly  affected  by  objects  and  reproducing 
their  absent  or  vanished  images,  and  the  power  of  modifying 
these  images  so  as  to  compose  of  them  new  ones, — do  they  fully 
constitute  what  men  call  imagination  ?  No,  or  at  least,  if  these 
are  indeed  the  proper  elements  of  imagination,  there  must  be 
something  else  added,  to  wit,  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  in 
all  its  degrees.  By  this  means  is  a  great  imagination  preserved 
and  kindled.  Did  the  careful  reading  of  Titus  Livius  enable  the 
author  of  the  Horaces  to  vividly  represent  to  himself  some  of  the 
scenes  described,  to  seize  their  principal  traits  and  combine  them 
happily?  From  the  outset,  sentiment,  love  of  the  beautiful, 
especially  of  the  morally  beautiful,  were  requisite ;  there  was 
required  that  great  heart  whence  sprang  the  word  of  the  ancient 
Horace. 

Let  us  be  well  understood.  We  do  not  say  that  sentiment  is 
imagination,  we  say  that  it  is  the  source  whence  imagination 
derives  its  inspirations  and  becomes  productive.  If  men  are  so 
different  in  regard  to  imagination,  it  is  because  some  are  cold  in 
presence  of  objects,  cold  in  the  representations  which  they  preserve 
of  them,  cold  also  in  the  combinations  which  they  form  of  them, 
whilst  others,  endowed  with  a  particular  sensibility,  are  vividly 
moved  by  the  first  impressions  of  objects,  preserve  strong  recollec- 
tions of  them,  and  carry  into  the  exercise  of  all  their  faculties  this 
same  force  of  emotion.  Take  away  sentiment  and  all  else  is  inan- 


136  LECTURE   SIXTH. 

imate;  let  it  manifest  itself,  and  every  thing  receives  warmth, 
color,  and  life. 

It  is  then  impossible  to  limit  imagination,  as  the  word  seems 
to  demand,  to  images  properly  so  called,  and  to  ideas  that  are 
related  to  physical  objects.  To  remember  sounds,  to  choose 
between  them,  to  combine  them  in  order  to  draw  from  them  new 
effects, — does  not  this  belong  to  imagination,  although  sound  is 
not  an  image  ?  The  true  musician  does  not  possess  less  imagina- 
tion than  the  painter.  Imagination  is  conceded  to  the  poet  when 
he  retraces  the  images  of  nature ;  will  this  same  faculty  be  refused 
him  when  he  retraces  sentiments  ?  But,  besides  images  and  sen- 
timents, does  not  the  poet  employ  the  high  thoughts  of  justice, 
liberty,  virtue,  in  a  word,  moral  ideas  ?  Will  it  be  said  that  in 
moral  paintings,  in  pictures  of  the  intimate  life  of  the  soul,  either 
graceful  or  energetic,  there  is  no  imagination  ? 

You  see  what  is  the  extent  of  imagination :  it  has  no  limits,  it 
is  applied  to  all  things.  Its  distinctive  character  is  that  of  deeply 
moving  the  soul  in  the  presence  of  a  beautiful  object,  or  by  its 
remembrance  alone,  or  even  by  the  idea  alone  of  an  imaginary 
object.  It  is  recognized  by  the  sign  that  it  produces,  by  the  aid 
of  its  representations,  the  same  impression  as,  and  even  an  im- 
pression more  vivid  than,  nature  by  the  aid  of  real  objects.  If 
beauty,  absent  and  dreamed  of,  does  not  affect  you  as  much  as, 
and  more  than,  present  beauty,  you  may  have  a  thousand  other 
gifts, — that  of  imagination  has  been  refused  you. 

In  the  eyes  of  imagination,  the  real  world  languishes  in  com- 
parison with  its  own  fictions.  One  may  feel  that  imagination  is 
his  master  by  the  ennui  that  real  and  present  things  give  him. 
The  phantoms  of  imagination  have  a  vagueness,  an  indefiniteness 
of  form,  which  moves  a  thousand  times  more  than  the  clearness 
and  distinctness  of  actual  perceptions.  And  then,  unless  we  are 
wholly  mad, — and  passion  does  not  always  render  this  service, — 
it  is  very  difficult  to  see  reality  otherwise  than  as  it  is  not,  that  is 
to  say,  very  imperfectly.  On  the  other  hand,  one  makes  of  an 
image  what  he  wishes,  unconsciously  metamorphoses  it,  embel- 


THE  BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE  MIND   OF   MAN.  137 

lishes  it  to  his  own  liking.  There  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  human 
soul  an  infinite  power  of  feeling  and  loving  to  which  the  entire 
world  does  not  answer,  still  less  a  single  one  of  its  creatures,  how- 
ever charming.  All  mortal  beauty,  viewed  near  by,  does  not 
suffice  for  this  insatiable  power  which  it  excites  and  cannot  satisfy. 
But  from  afar,  its  effects  disappear  or  are  diminished,  shades  are 
mingled  and  confounded  in  the  clear-obscure  of  memory  and 
dream,  and  the  objects  please  more  because  they  are  less  deter- 
minate. The  peculiarity  of  men  of  imagination  is,  that  they  repre- 
sent men  and  things  otherwise  than  as  they  are,  and  that  they 
have  a  passion  for  such  fantastic  images.  Those  that  are  called 
positive  men,  are  men  without  imagination,  who  perceive  only 
what  they  see,  and  deal  with  reality  as  it  is  instead  of  transform- 
ing it.  They  have,  in  general,  more  reason  than  sentiment ;  they 
may  be  seriously,  profoundly  honest ;  they  will  never  be  either 
poets  or  artists.  What  makes  the  poet  or  artist  is,  with  a  founda- 
tion of  good  sense  and  reason — without  which  all  the  rest  is 
useless — a  sensitive,  even  a  passionate  heart ;  above  all,  a  vivid, 
a  powerful  imagination. 

If  sentiment  acts  upon  imagination,  we  see  that  imagination 
returns  with  usury  to  sentiment  what  it  gives. 

This  pure  and  ardent  passion,  this  worship  of  beauty  that 
makes  the  great  artist,  can  be  found  only  in  a  man  of  imagina- 
tion. In  fact,  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  may  be  awakened 
in  each  one  of  us  before  any  beautiful  object ;  but,  when  this 
object  has  disappeared,  if  its  image  does  not  subsist  vivaciously 
retraced,  the  sentiment  which  it  for  a  moment  excited  is  little  by 
little  effaced ;  it  may  be  revived  at  the  sight  of  another  object, 
but  only  to  be  extinguished  again, — always  dying  to  be  born 
again  at  hazard ;  not  being  nourished,  increased,  exalted  by  the 
vivacious  and  continuous  reproduction  of  its  object  in  the  imagi- 
nation, it  wants  that  inspiring  power,  without  which  there  is  no 
artist,  no  poet. 

A  word  more  on  another  faculty,  which  is  not  a  simple  fac- 
ulty, but  a  happy  combination  of  those  which  have  just  been 


138  LECTURE    SIXTH. 

mentioned, — taste,  so  ill  treated,  so  arbitrarily  limited  in  all 
theories. 

If,  after  having  heard  a  beautiful  poetical  or  musical  work, 
admired  a  statue  or  a  picture,  you  are  able  to  recall  what  your 
senses  have  perceived,  to  see  again  the  absent  picture,  to  hear 
again  the  sounds  that  no  longer  exist ;  in  a  word,  if  you  have 
imagination,  you  possess  one  of  the  conditions  without  which 
there  is  no  true  taste.  In  fact,  in  order  to  relish  the  works  of 
imagination,  is  it  not  necessary  to  have  taste  ?  Do  we  not  need, 
in  order  to  feel  an  author,  not  to  equal  him,  without  doubt,  but 
to  resemble  him  in  some  degree  ?  Will  not  a  man  of  sensible, 
but  dry  and  austere  mind,  like  Le  Batteux  or  Condillac,  be  in- 
sensible to  the  happy  darings  of  genius,  and  will  he  not  carry 
into  criticism  a  narrow  severity,  a  reason  very  little  reasonable — 
since  he  does  not  comprehend  all  the  parts  of  human  nature, — 
an  intolerance  that  mutilates  and  blemishes  art  while  thinking  to 
purify  it  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  imagination  does  not  suffice  for  the  appre- 
ciation of  beauty.  Moreover,  that  vivacity  of  imagination  so 
precious  to  taste,  when  it  is  somewhat  restrained,  produces,  when 
it  rules,  only  a  very  imperfect  taste,  which,  not  having  reason  for 
a  basis,  carelessly  judges,  runs  the  risk  of  misunderstanding  the 
greatest  beauty, — beauty  that  is  regulated.  Unity  in  composi- 
tion, harmony  of  all  the  parts,  just  proportion  of  details,  skilful 
combination  of  effects,  discrimination,  sobriety,  measure,  are  so 
many  merits  it  will  little  feel,  and  will  not  put  in  their  place. 
Imagination  has  doubtless  much  to  do  with  works  of  art ;  but,  in 
fine,  it  is  not  every  thing.  Is  it  only  imagination  that  makes  the 
Polyeucte  and  the  Misanthrope,  two  incomparable  marvels  ?  Is 
there  not,  also,  in  the  profound  simplicity  of  plan,  in  the  measured 
development  of  action,  in  the  sustained  truth  of  characters,  a  su- 
perior reason,  different  from  imagination  which  furnishes  the 
superior  colors,  and  from  sensibility  that  gives  the  passion  ? 

Besides  imagination  and  reason,  the  man  of  taste  ought  to 
possess  an  enlightened  but  ardent  love  of  beauty  ;  he  must  take 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN   THE    MIND    OF   MAX.  139 

delight  in  meeting  it,  must  search  for  it,  must  summon  it.  To 
comprehend  and  demonstrate  that  a  thing  is  not  beautiful,  is  an 
ordinary  pleasure,  an  ungrateful  task ;  but  to  discern  a  beautiful 
thing,  to  be  penetrated  with  its  beauty,  to  make  it  evident,  and 
make  others  participate  in  our  sentiment,  is  an  exquisite  joy,  a 
generous  task.  •  Admiration  is,  for  him  who  feels  it,  at  once  a 
happiness  and  an  honor.  It  is  a  happiness  to  feel  deeply  what 
is  beautiful ;  it  is  an  honor  to  know  how  to  recognize  it.  Admi- 
ration is  the  sign  of  an  elevated  reason  served  by  a  noble  heart. 
It  is  above  a  small  criticism,  that  is  skeptical  and  powerless ;  but 
it  is  the  soul  of  a  large  criticism,  a  criticism  that  is  productive : 
it  is,  thus  to  speak,  the  divine  part  of  taste. 

After  having  spoken  of  taste  which  appreciates  beauty,  shall 
we  say  nothing  of  genius  which  makes  it  live  again  ?  Genius  is 
nothing  else  than  taste  in  action,  that  is  to  say,  the  three  powers 
of  taste  carried  to  their  culmination,  and  armed  with  a  new  and 
mysterious  power,  the  power  of  execution.  But  we  are  already 
entering  upon  the  domain  of  art.  Let  us  wait,  we  shall  soon 
find  art  again  and  the  genius  that  accompanies  it. 


LECTUEE   VII. 

THE  BEAUTIFUL   IN   OBJECTS. 

Eefutation  of  different  theories  on  the  nature  of  the  beautiful :  the  beautiful 
cannot  be  reduced  to  what  is  usefuL — Nor  to  convenience. — Nor  to  pro- 
portion.—Essential  characters  of  the  beautiful. — Different  kinds  of  beau- 
ties. The  beautiful  and  the  sublime.  Physical  beauty.  Intellectual 
beauty.  Moral  beauty. — Ideal  beauty:  it  is  especially  moral  beauty. — 
God,  the  first  principle  of  the  beautiful. — Theory  of  Plato. 

WE  have  made  known  the  beautiful  in  ourselves,  in  the  facul- 
ties that  perceive  it  and  appreciate  it,  in  reason,  sentiment, 
imagination,  taste ;  we  come,  according  to  the  order  determined 
by  the  method,  to  other  questions :  What  is  the  beautiful  in  ob- 
jects? What  is  the  beautiful  taken  in  itself?  What  are  its 
characters  and  different  species  ?  What,  in  fine,  is  its  first  and 
last  principle  ?  All  these  questions  must  be  treated,  and,  if  pos- 
sible, solved.  Philosophy  has  its  point  of  departure  in  psychol- 
ogy ;  but,  in  order  to  attain  also  its  legitimate  termination,  it 
must  set  out  from  man,  and  reach  things  themselves. 

The  history  of  philosophy  offers  many  theories  on  the  nature 
af  the  beautiful :  we  do  not  wish  to  enumerate  nor  discuss  them 
all ;  we  will  designate  the  most  important.1 

There  is  one  very  gross,  which  defines  the  beautiful  as  that 


1  If  one  would  make  himself  acquainted  with  a  simple  and  piquant  refuta- 
tion, written  two  thousand  years  ago,  of  false  theories  of  beauty,  he  may 
read  the  Hvppias  of  Plato,  vol.  iv.  of  our  translation.  The  Phcedrus,  vol.  vi., 
contains  the  veiled  exposition  of  Plato's  own  theory ;  but  it  is  in  the  Banquet 
(Ibid.),  and  particularly  in  the  discourse  of  Diotimus,  that  we  must  look  for 
the  thought  of  Plato  carried  to  its  highest  degree  of  development,  and  clothed 
with  all  the  beauty  of  human  language. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL    IN   OBJECTS.  141 

which  pleases  the  senses,  that  which  procures  an  agreeable  im- 
pression. We  will  not  stop  at  this  opinion.  We  have  sufficiently 
refuted  it  in  showing  that  it  is  impossible  to  reduce  the  beautiful 
to  the  agreeable. 

A  sensualism  a  little  more  wise  puts  the  useful  in  the  place  of 
the  agreeable,  that  is  to  say,  changes  the  form  of  the  same  prin- 
ciple. Neither  is  the  beautiful  the  object  which  procures  for  us 
in  the  present  moment  an  agreeable  but  fugitive  sensation,  it  is 
the  object  which  can  often  procure  for  us  this  same  sensation  or 
others  similar.  No  great  effort  of  observation  or  reasoning  is 
necessary  to  convince  us  that  utility  has  nothing  to  do  with 
beauty.  What  is  useful  is  not  always  beautiful.  What  is 
beautiful  is  not  always  useful,  and  what  is  at  once  useful  and 
beautiful  is  beautiful  for  some  other  reason  than  its  utility.  Ob- 
serve a  lever  or  a  pulley :  surely  nothing  is  more  useful.  Never- 
theless, you  are  not  tempted  to  say  that  this  is  beautiful.  Have 
you  discovered  an  antique  vase  admirably  worked  ?  You  exclaim 
that  this  vase  is  beautiful,  without  thinking  to  seek  of  what  use 
it  may  be  to  you.  Finally,  symmetry  and  order  are  beautiful 
thingSj  and  at  the  same  time,  are  useful  things,  because  they 
economize  space,  because  objects  symmetrically  disposed  are  easier 
to  find  when  one  wants  them  ;  but  that  is  not  what  makes  for  us 
the  beauty  of  symmetry,  for  we  immediately  seize  this  kind  of 
beauty,  and  it  is  often  late  enough  before  we  recognize  the  utility 
that  is  found  in  it.  It  even  sometimes  happens,  that  after  having 
admired  the  beauty  of  an  object,  we  are  not  able  to  divine  its 
use,  although  it  may  have  one.  The  useful  is,  then,  entirely 
different  from  the  beautiful,  far  from  being  its  foundation. 

A  celebrated  and  very  ancient1  theory  makes  the  beautiful 
consist  in  the  perfect  suitableness  of  means  to  their  end.  Here 
the  beautiful  is  no  longer  the  useful,  it  is  the  suitable ;  these  two 
ideas  must  be  distinguished.  A  machine  produces  excellent 
effects,  economy  of  time,  work,  etc. ;  it  is  therefore  useful.  If, 

1  See  the  Uippias. 


142  LECTURE    SEVENTH. 

moreover,  examining  its  construction,  I  find  that  each  piece  is  ic 
its  place,  and  that  all  are  skilfully  disposed  for  the  result  which 
they  should  produce ;  even  without  regarding  the  utility  of  this 
result,  as  the  means  are  well  adapted  to  their  end,  I  judge  that 
there  is  suitableness  in  it.  We  are  already  approaching  the  idea 
of  the  beautiful ;  for  we  are  no  longer  considering  what  is  useful, 
but  what  is  proper.  Now,  we  have  not  yet  attained  the  true 
character  of  beauty ;  there  are,  in  fact,  objects  very  well  adapted 
to  their  end,  which  we  do  not  call  beautiful.  A  bench  without 
ornament  and  without  elegance,  provided  it  be  solid,  provided  all 
the  parts  are  firmly  connected,  provided  one  may  sit  down  on  it 
with  safety,  provided  it  may  be  for  this  purpose  suitable,  agree- 
able even,  may  give  an  example  of  the  most  perfect  adaptation 
of  means  to  an  end ;  it  will  not,  therefore,  be  said  that  this  bench 
is  beautiful.  There  is  here  always  this  difference  between  suita- 
bleness and  utility,  that  an  object  to  be  beautiful  has  no  need  of 
being  useful,  but  that  it  is  not  beautiful  if  it  does  not  possess 
suitableness,  if  there  is  in  it  a  disagreement  between  the  end  and 
the  means. 

Some  have  thought  to  find  the  beautiful  in  proportion,  and 
this  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  conditions  of  beauty,  but  it  is  not  the 
only  one.  It  is  very  certain,  that  an  object  ill-proportioned  can- 
not be  beautiful.  There  is  in  all  beautiful  objects,  however  far 
they  may  be  from  geometric  form,  a  sort  of  living  geometry. 
But,  I  ask,  is  it  proportion  that  is  dominant  in  this  slender  tree, 
with  flexible  and  graceful  branches,  with  rich  and  shady  foliage  ? 
What  makes  the  terrible  beauty  of  a  storm,  what  makes  that  of 
a  great  picture,  of  an  isolated  verse,  or  a  sublime  ode  ?  It  is  not, 
I  know,  wanting  in  law  and  rule,  neither  is  it  law  and  rule ; 
often,  even  what  at  first  strikes  us  is  an  apparent  irregularity.  It 
is  absurd  to  pretend  that  what  makes  us  admire  all  these  things 
and  many  more,  is  the  same  quality  that  makes  us  admire  a 
geometric  figure,  that  is  to  say,  the  exact  correspondence  of  parts. 

What  we  say  of  proportion  may  be  said  of  order,  which  is 
something  less  mathematical  than  proportion,  but  scarcely 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN   OBJECTS.  143 

explains  better  what  is  free,  varied,  and  negligent  in  certain 
beauties. 

All  these  theories  which  refer  beauty  to  order,  harmony,  and 
proportion,  are  at  foundation  only  one  and  the  same  theory  which 
in  the  beautiful  sees  unity  before  all.  And  surely  unity  is  beau- 
tiful ;  it  is  an  important  part  of  beauty,  but  it  is  not  the  whole 
of  beauty. 

The  most  probable  theory  of  the  beautiful  is  that  which  com- 
poses it  of  two  contrary  and  equally  necessary  elements,  unity 
and  variety.  Behold  a  beautiful  flower.  Without  doubt,  unity, 
order,  proportion,  symmetry  even,  are  in  it ;  for,  without  these 
qualities,  reason  would  be  absent  from  it,  and  all  things  are 
made  with  a  marvellous  reason.  But,  at  the  same  time,  what  a 
diversity  !  How  many  shades  in  the  color,  what  richness  in  the 
least  details !  Even  in  mathematics,  what  is  beautiful  is  not  an 
abstract  principle,  it  is  a  principle  carrying  with  itself  a  long  chain 
of  consequences.  There  is  no  beauty  without  life,  and  life  is 
movement,  is  diversity. 

Unity  and  variety  are  applied  to  all  orders  of  beauty.  Let  us 
rapidly  run  over  these  different  orders. 

In  the  first  place,  there  are  beautiful  objects,  to  speak  properly, 
and  sublime  objects.  A  beautiful  object,  we  have  seen,  is  some- 
thing completed,  circumscribed,  limited,  which  all  our  faculties 
easily  embrace,  because  the  different  parts  are  on  a  somewhat 
narrow  scale.  A  sublime  object  is  that  which,  by  forms  not  in 
themselves  disproportionate,  but  less  definite  and  more  difficult 
to  seize,  awakens  in  us  the  sentiment  of  the  infinite. 

There  are  two  very  distinct  species  of  beauty.  But  reality  is 
inexhaustible,  and  in  all  the  degrees  of  reality  there  is  beauty. 

Among  sensible  objects,  colors,  sounds,  figures,  movements,  are 
capable  of  producing  the  idea  and  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful. 
All  these  beauties  are  arranged  under  that  species  of  beauty 
which,  right  or  wrong,  is  called  physical  beauty. 

If  from  the  world  of  sense  we  elevate  ourselves  to  that  of  mind, 
truth,  and  science,  we  shall  find  there  beauties  more  severe,  but 


144:  LECTURE   SEVENTH. 

not  less  real.  The  universal  laws  that  govern  bodies,  those  that 
govern  intelligences,  the  great  principles  that  contain  and  produce 
long  deductions,  the  genius  that  creates,  in  the  artist,  poet,  or 
philosopher, — all  these  are  beautiful,  as  well  as  nature  herself: 
this  is  what  is  called  intellectual  beauty. 

Finally,  if  we  consider  the  moral  world  and  its  laws,  the  idea 
of  liberty,  virtue,  and  devotedness,  here  the  austere  justice  of  an 
Aristides,  there  the  heroism  of  a  Leonidas,  the  prodigies  of  charity 
or  patriotism,  we  shall  certainly  find  a  third  order  of  beauty  that 
still  surpasses  the  other  two,  to  wit,  moral  beauty. 

Neither  let  us  forget  to  apply  to  all  these  beauties  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  beautiful  and  the  sublime.  There  are,  then,  the 
beautiful  and  the  sublime  at  once  in  nature,  in  ideas,  in  senti- 
ments, in  actions.  What  an  almost  infinite  variety  in  beauty  ! 

After  having  enumerated  all  theso  differences,  could  we  not 
reduce  them  ?  They  are  incontestable ;  but,  in  this  diversity  is 
there  not  unity  ?  Is  there  not  a  single  beauty  of  which  all  par- 
ticular beauties  are  only  reflections,  shades,  degrees,"  or  degrada- 
tions ? 

Plotinus,  in  his  treatise  On  the  Beautiful  f  proposed  to  him- 
self this  question. .  He  asks — What  is  the  beautiful  in  itself?  I 
see  clearly  that  such  or  such  a  form  is  beautiful,  that  such  or 
such  an  action  is  also  beautiful ;  but  why  and  how  are  these  two 
objects,  so  dissimilar,  beautiful  ?  What  is  the  common  quality 
which,  being  found  in  these  two  objects,  ranges  them  under  the 
general  idea  of  the  beautiful  ? 

It  is  necessary  to  answer  this  question,  or  the  theory  of  beauty 
is  a  maze  without  issue ;  one  applies  the  same  name  to  the  most 
diverse  things,  without  understanding  the  real  unity  that  author- 
izes this  unity  of  name. 

Either  the  diversities  which  we  have  designated  in  beauty  are 
such  that  it  is  impossible  to  discover  their  relation,  or  these  diver- 


1  First  Ennead,  book  vi.,  in  the  work  of  M.  B.  Saint-Hillaire,  on  the  School 
<>f Alexandria,  the  translation  of  this  morsel  of  Plotinus,  p.  197. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL    IN    OBJECTS.  145 

sities  are  especially  apparent,  and  have  their  harmony,  their  con- 
cealed unity. 

Is  it  pretended  that  this  unity  is  a  chimera  ?  Then  physical 
beauty,  moral  beauty,  and  intellectual  beauty,  are  strangers  to 
each  other.  What,  then,  will  the  artist  do  ?  He  is  surrounded 
by  different  beauties,  and  he  must  make  a  work  ;  for  such  is  the 
recognized  law  of  art.  But  if  this  unity  that  is-  imposed  upon' 
him  is  a  factitious  unity,  if  there  are  in  nature  only  essentially  dis- 
similar beauties,  art  deceives  and  lie&  to  us.  Let  it  be  explained, 
then,  how  falsehood  is  the  law  of  art.  That  cannot  be  ;  the  unity 
that  art  expresses,  it  must  have  somewhere  caught  a  glimpse  of. 
in  order  to  transport  it  into  its  works. 

We  neither  retract  the  distinction  between  the  beautiful  and 
the  sublime,  nor  the  other  distinctions  just  now  indicated ;  bat  it 
is  necessary  to  re-unite  after  having  distinguished  them.  These 
distinctions  and  these  re-unions  are  not  contradictory  :  the  great 
law  of  beauty,  like  that  of  truth,  is  unity  as  well  as  variety.  All 
is  one,  and  all  is  diverse.  We  have  divided  beauty  into  three 
great  classes — physical  beauty,  intellectual  beauty,  and  moral 
beauty.  We  must  now  seek  the  unity  of  these  three  sorts  of" 
beauty.  Now,  we  think  that  they  resolve  themselves  into  one 
and  the  same  beauty,  moral  beauty,  meaning  by  that,  with  moral 
beauty  properly  so  called,  all  spiritual  beauty. 

Let  us  put  this  opinion  to  the  proof  of  facts. 

Place  yourself  before  that  statue  of  Apollo  which  is  called 
Apollo  Belvidere,  and  observe  attentively  what  strikes  you  in 
that  master-piece.  Winkelmann,  who  was  not  a  metaphysician, 
but  a  learned  antiquarian,  a  man  of  taste  without  system,  made 
a  celebrated  analysis  of  the  Apollo.1  It  is  curious  to  study  it. 


1  Winkelmann  has  twice  described  the  Apollo,  History  of  Art  among  the 
Ancients,  Paris,  1802,  3  vols.,  in  4to.  Vol.  i.,  book  iv.,  chap,  iii.,  Art  among 
the  Greeks: — "The  Apollo  of  the  Vatican  offers  us  that  God  in  a  movement 
of  indignation  against  the  serpent  Python,  which  he  has  just  killed  with  ar- 
row-shots, and  in  a  sentiment  of  contempt  for  a  victory  so  little  worthy  of  a 
divinity.  The  wise  artist,  who  proposed  to  represent  the  most  beautiful  of 

1 


14:6  LECTURE   SEVENTH. 

What  Winkelmann  extols  before  all,  is  the  character  of  divinity 
stamped  upon  the  immortal  youth  that  invests  that  beautiful 
body.,  upon  the  height,  a  little  above  that  of  man,  upon  the  ma- 


thc  gods,  placed  the  anger  in  the  nose,  which,  according  to  the  ancients, 
was  its  seat ;  and  the  disdain  on  the  lips.  He  expressed  the  anger  by  the 
inflation  of  the  nostrils,  and  the  disdain  by  the  elevation  of  the  under  lip, 
which  causes  the  same  movement  in  the  chin." — Ibid .,  vol.  ii.,  book  iv.,  chap, 
vi.,  Art  under  the  Emperors: — "  Of  all  the  antique  statues  that  have  escaped 
the  fury  of  barbarians  and  the  destructive  hand  of  time,  the  statue  of  Apollo 
is,  without  contradiction,  the  most  sublime.  One  would  say  that  the  artist 
composed  a  figure  purely  ideal,  and  employed  matter  only  because  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  execute  and  represent  his  idea.  As  much  as  Homer's 
description  of  Apollo  surpasses  the  descriptions  which  other  poets  have  un- 
dertaken after  him,  so  much  this  statue  excels  all  the  figures  of  this  god. 
Its  height  is  above  that  of  man,  and  its  attitude  proclaims  the  divine  gran- 
deur with  which  it  is  filled.  A  perennial  spring-time,  like  that  which  reigns 
in  the  happy  fields  of  Elysium,  clothes  with  lovable  youth  the  beautiful 
body,  and  shines  with  sweetness  over  the  noble  structure  of  the  limbs.  In 
order  to  feel  the  merit  of  this  chef-cPceuvre  of  art,  we  must  be  penetrated  with 
intellectual  beauty,  and  become,  if  possible,  the  creatures  of  a  celestial  na- 
ture ;  for  there  is  nothing  mortal  in  it,  nothing  subject  to  the  wants  of  hu- 
manity. That  body,  whose  forms  are  not  interrupted  by  a  vein,  which  is 
not  agitated  by  a  nerve,  seems  animated  with  a  celestial  spirit,  which  circu- 
lates like  a  sweet  vapor  in  all  the  parts  of  that  admirable  figure.  The  god 
has  just  been  pursuing  Python,  against  which  he  has  bent,  for  the  first  time, 
his  formidable  bow ;  in  his  rapid  course,  he  has  overtaken  him,  and  given 
him  a  mortal  wound.  Penetrated  with  the  conviction  of  his  power,  and  lost 
in  a  concentrated  joy,  his  august  look  penetrates  far  into  the  infinite,  and  is 
extended  far  beyond  his  victory.  Disdain  sits  upon  his  lips  ;  the  indigna- 
tion that  he  breathes  distends  his  nostrils,  and  ascends  to  his  eyebrows ; 
but  an  unchangeable  serenity  is  painted  on  his  brow,  and  his  eye  is  full  of 
sweetness,  as  though  the  Muses  were  caressing  him.  Among  all  the  figures 
that  remain  to  us  of  Jupiter,  there  is  none  in  which  the  father  of  the  gods 
approaches  the  grandeur  with  which  he  manifested  himself  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  Homer;  but  in  the  traits  of  the  Apollo  Belvidere,  we  find  the  indi- 
vidual beauties  of  all  the  other  divinities  united,  as  in  that  of  Pandora.  The 
forehead  is  the  forehead  of  Jupiter,  inclosing  the  goddess  of  wisdom ;  the 
eyebrows,  by  their  movement,  announce  his  supreme  will ;  the  large  eyes 
are  those  of  the  queen  of  the  gods,  orbed  with  dignity,  and  the  mouth  is  an 
image  of  that  of  Bacchus,  where  breathed  voluptuousness.  Like  the  tender 
branches  of  the  vine,  his  beautiful  locks  flow  around  his  head,  as  if  they 
were  lightly  agitated  by  the  zephyr's  breath.  They  seem  perfumed  with 
the  essence  of  the  gods,  and  are  charmingly  arranged  over  his  head  by  the 
hand  of  the  Graces.  At  the  sight  of  this  marvel  of  art,  I  forget  everything 
else,  and  my  mind  takes  a  supernatural  disposition,  fitted  to  judge  of  it  with 
dignity;  from  admiration  I  pass  to  ecstasy;  I  feel  my  breast  dilating  and 


THE   BEAUTIFUL    IN   OBJECTS.  147 

jestic  altitude,  upon  the  imperious  movement,  upon  the  ensemble, 
and  all  the  details  of  the  person.  The  forehead  is  indeed  that  of 
a  god, — an  unalterable  placidity  dwells  upon  it.  Lower  down, 
humanity  reappears  somewhat ;  and  that  is  very  necessary,  in 
order  to  interest  humanity  in  the  works  of  art.  In  that  satisfied 
look,  in  the  distension  of  the  nostrils,  in  the  elevation  of  the 
under  lip,  are  at  once  felt  anger  mingled  with  disdain,  pride  of 
victory,  and  the  little  fatigue  which  it  has  cost.  Weigh  well 
each  word  of  Winkelmann :  you  will  find  there  a  moral  impres- 
sion. The  tone  of  the  learned  antiquary  is  elevated,  little  by  lit- 
tle, to  enthusiasm,  and  his  analysis  becomes  a  hymn  to  spiritual 
beauty. 

Instead  of  a  statue,  observe  a  real  and  living  man.  Regard 
that  man  who,  solicited  by  the  strongest  motives  to  sacrifice  duty 
to  fortune,  triumphs  over  interest,  after  an  heroic  struggle,  and 
sacrifices  fortune  to  virtue.  Regard  him  at  the  moment  when  he 
is  about  to  take  this  magnanimous  resolution ;  his  face  will  appear 
to  you  beautiful,  because  it  expresses  the  beauty  of  his  soul.  Per- 
haps, under  all  other  circumstances,  the  face  of  the  man  is  common, 
even  trivial ;  here,  illuminated  by  the  soul  which  it  manifests,  it 
is  ennobled,  and  takes  an  imposing  character  of  beauty.  So,  the 
natural  face  of  Socrates1  contrasts  strongly  with  the  type  of  Gre- 
cian beauty ;  but  look  at  him  on  his  death-bed,  at  the  moment 
of  drinking  the  hemlock,  conversing  with  his  disciples  on  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  and  his  face  will  appear  to  you  sublime.2 

At  the  highest  point  of  moral  grandeur,  Socrates  expires : — 

rising,  like  those  who  are  filled  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy ;  I  am  transported 
to  Delos,  and  the  sacred  groves  of  Syria, — places  which  Apollo  honored  with 
his  presence : — the  statue  seems  to  be  animated  as  it  were  with  the  beauty 
that  sprung  of  old  from  the  hands  of  Pygmalion.  How  can  I  describe  thee, 
0  inimitable  master-piece  ?  For  this  it  would  be  necessary  that  art  itself 
should  deign  to  inspire  my  pen.  The  traits  that  I  have  just  sketched,  I  lay 
before  thee,  as  those  who  came  to  crown  the  gods,  put  their  crowns  at  their 
feet,  not  being  able  to  reach  their  heads." 

1  See  the  last  part  of  the  Banquet,  the  discourse  of  Alcibiades,  p.  326  of 
vol.  vi.  of  our  translation. 

a  We  here  have  in  mind,  and  we  avow  it,  the  Socrates  of  David,  which 


148  LECTUKE   SEVENTH. 

you  have  before  your  eyes  no  longer  any  thing  but  his  dead  body ; 
the  dead  face  preserves  its  beauty,  as  long  as  it  preserves  traces 
of  the  mind  that  animated  it ;  but  little  by  little  the  expression 
is  extinguished  or  disappears ;  the  face  then  becomes  vulgar  and 
ugly.  The  expression  of  death  is  hideous  or  sublime, — hideous 
at  the  aspect  of  the  decomposition  of  the  matter  that  no  longer 
retains  the  spirit, — sublime  when  it  awakens  in  us  the  idea  of 
eternity. 

Consider  the  figure  of  man  in  repose :  it  is  more  beautiful  than 
that  of  an  animal,  the  figure  of  an  animal  is  more  beautiful  than 
the  form  of  any  inanimate  object.  It  is  because  the  human  figure, 
even  in  the  absence  of  virtue  and  genius,  always  reflects  an  intel- 
ligent and  moral  nature,  it  is  because  the  figure  of  an  animal 
reflects  sentiment  at  least,  and  something  of  soul,  if  not  the  soul 
entire.  If  from  man  and  the  animal  we  descend  to  purely  physi- 
cal nature,  we  shall  still  find  beauty  there,  as  long  as  we  find 
there  some  shade  of  intelligence,  I  know  not  what,  that  awakens 
in  us  some  thought,  some  sentiment.  Do  we  arrive  at  some 
piece  of  matter  that  expresses  nothing,  that  signifies  nothing, 
neither  is  the  idea  of  beauty  applied  to  it.  But  every  thing  that 
exists  is  animated.  Matter  is  shaped  and  penetrated  by  forces 
that  are  not  material,  and  it  obeys  laws  that  attest  an  intelligence 
everywhere  present.  The  most  subtile  chemical  analysis  does  not 
reach  a  dead  and  inert  nature,  but  a  nature  that  is  organized  in 
its  own  way,  that  is  neither  deprived  of  forces  nor  laws.  In  the 
depths  of  the  earth,  as  in  the  heights  of  the  heavens,  in  a  grain 
of  sand  as  in  a  gigantic  mountain,  an  immortal  spirit  shines 
through  the  thickest  coverings.  Let  us  contemplate  nature  with 
the  eye  of  the  soul  as  well  as  with  the  eye  of  the  body : — every- 
where a  moral  expression  will  strike  us,  and  the  forms  of  things 


appears  to  us,  the  theatrical  character  being  admitted,  above  its  reputation. 
Besides  Socrates,  it  is  impossible  not  to  admire  Plato  listening  to  his  master, 
as  it  were  from  the  bottom  of  his  soul,  without  looking  at  him,  with  his  back 
turned  upon  the  scene  that  is  passing,  and  lost  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
intelligible  world. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN    OBJECTS.  14r9 

will  impress  us  as  symbols  of  thought.  We  have  said  that  with 
man,  and  with  the  animal  even,  the  figure  is  beautiful  on  account 
of  the  expression.  But,  when  you  are  on  the  summit  of  the  Alps, 
or  before  the  immense  Ocean,  when  you  behold  the  rising  or  setting 
of  the  sun,  at  the  beginning  or  the  close  of  the  day,  do  not  these 
imposing  pictures  produce  on  you  a  moral  effect  ?  Do  all  these 
grand  spectacles  appear  only  for  the  sake  of  appearing  ?  Do  we 
not  regard  them  as  manifestations  of  an  admirable  power,  intelli- 
gence, and  wisdom  ?  And,  thus  to  speak,  is  not  the  face  of  nature 
expressive  like  that  of  man  ? 

Form  cannot  be  simply  a  form,  it  must  be  the  form  of  some- 
thing. Physical  beauty  is,  then,  the  sign  of  an  internal  beauty, 
which  is  spiritual  and  moral  beauty ;  and  this  is  the  foundation, 
the  principle,  the  unity  of  the  beautiful.1 

All  the  beauties  that  we  have  just  enumerated  and  reduced 
compose  what  is  called  the  really  beautiful.  But,  above  real 
beauty,  is  a  beauty  of  another  order — ideal  beauty.  The  ideal 
resides  neither  in  an  individual,  nor  in  a  collection  of  individuals. 
Nature  or  experience  furnishes  us  the  occasion  of  conceiving  it, 
but  it  is  essentially  distinct.  Let  it  once  be  conceived,  and  all 
natural  figures,  though  never  so  beautiful,  are  only  images  of  a 
superior  beauty  which  they  do  not  realize.  Give  me  a  beautiful 
action,  and  I  will  imagine  one  still  more  beautiful.  The  Apollo 
itself  is  open  to  criticism  in  more  than  one  respect.  The  ideal 
continually  recedes  as  we  approach  it.  Its  last  termination  is  in 
the  infinite,  that  is  to  say,  in  God ;  or,  to  speak  more  correctly, 
the  true  and  absolute  ideal  is  nothing  else  than  God  himself. 

1  We  are  fortunate  in  finding  this  theory,  which  is  so  dear  to  us,  confirmed 
by  the  authority  of  one  of  the  severest  and  most  circumspect  minds: — it 
may  be  seen  in  Eeid,  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  23.  The  Scotch  philosopher 
terminates  his  Essay  on  Taste  with  these  words,  which  happily  remind  us  of 
the  thought  and  manner  of  Plato  himself: — "  Whether  the  reasons  that  I 
have  given  to  prove  that  sensible  beauty  is  only  the  image  of  moral  beauty 
appear  sufficient  or  not,  I  hope  that  my  doctrine,  in  attempting  to  unite  the 
terrestrial  Venus  more  closely  to  the  celestial  Venus,  will  not  seem  to  have 
for  its  object  to  abase  the  first,  and  render  her  less  worthy  of  the  homage 
that  mankind  has  always  paid  her." 


150 


LECTURE   SEVENTH. 


God,  being  the  principle  of  all  things,  must  for  this  reason  be 
that  of  perfect  beauty,  and,  consequently,  of  all  natural  beauties 
that  express  it  more  or  less  imperfectly ;  he  is  the  principle  of 
beauty,  both  as  author  of  the  physical  world  and  as  father  of  the 
intellectual  and  moral  world. 

Is  it  not  necessary  to  be  a  slave  of  the  senses  and  of  appear- 
ances in  order  to  stop  at  movements,  at  forms,  at  sounds,  at  col- 
ors, whose  harmonious  combinations  produce  the  beauty  of  this 
visible  world,  and  not  to  conceive  behind  this  scene  so  magnifi- 
cent and  well  regulated,  the  orderer,  the  geometer,  the  supreme 
artist  ? 

Physical  beauty  serves  as  an  envelope  to  intellectual  and  moral 
beauty. 

What  can  be  the  principle  of  intellectual  beauty,  that  splendor 
of  the  true,  except  the  principle  of  all  truth  ? 

Moral  beauty  comprises,  as  we  shall  subsequently  see,1  two  dis- 
tinct elements,  equally  but  diversely  beautiful,  justice  and  charity, 
respect  and  love  of  men.  He  who  expresses  in  his  conduct  jus- 
tice and  charity,  accomplishes  the  most  beautiful  of  all  works ; 
the  good  man  is,  in  his  way,  the  greatest  of  all  artists.  But 
what  shall  we  say  of  him  who  is  the  very  substance  of  justice 
and  the  exhaustless  source  of  love  ?  If  our  moral  nature  is  beau- 
tiful, what  must  be  the  beauty  of  its  author !  His  justice  and 
goodness  are  everywhere,  both  in  us  and  out  of  us.  His  justice 
is  the  moral  order  that  no  human  law  makes,  that  all  human 
laws  are  forced  to  express,  that  is  preserved  and  perpetuated  in 
the  world  by  its  own  force.  Let  us  descend  into  ourselves,  and 
consciousness  will  attest  the  divine  justice  in  the  peace  and  con 
tentment  that  accompany  virtue,  in  the  troubles  and  tortures  thai 
are  the  invariable  punishments  of  vice  and  crime.  How  many 
times,  and  with  what  eloquence,  have  men  celebrated  the  indefat 
igable  solicitude  of  Providence,  its  benefits  everywhere  manifest 
in  the  smallest  as  well  as  in  the  greatest  phenomena  of  nature, 

1  Part  iii.,  lecture  15. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL   IN    OBJECTS.  151 

which  we  forget  so  easily  because  they  have  become  so  familiar 
to  us,  but  which,  on  reflection,  call  forth  our  mingled  admiration 
and  gratitude,  and  proclaim  a  good  God,  full  of  love  for  his 
creatures ! 

Thus,  God  is  the  principle  of  the  three  orders  of  beauty  that 
we  have  distinguished,  physical  beauty,  intellectual  beauty,  moral 
beauty. 

In  him  also  are  reunited  the  two  great  forms  of  the  beautiful 
distributed  in  each  of  these  three  orders,  to  wit,  the  beautiful  and 
the  sublime.  God  is,  par  excellence,  the  beautiful — for  what  ob- 
ject satisfies  more  all  our  faculties,  our  reason,  our  imagination, 
our  heart !  He  offers  to  reason  the  highest  idea,  beyond  which 
it  has  nothing  more  to  seek ;  to  imagination  the  most  ravishing 
contemplation ;  to  the  heart  a  sovereign  object  of  love.  He  is, 
then,  perfectly  beautiful ;  but  is  he  not  sublime  also  in  other 
ways  ?  If  he  extends  the  horizon  of  thought,  it  is  to  confound 
it  in  the  abyss  of  his  greatness.  If  the  soul  blooms  at  the  spec- 
tacle of  his  goodness,  has  it  not  also  reason  to  be  affrighted  at 
the  idea  of  his  justice,  which  is  not  less  present  to  it  ?  God  is  at 
once  mild  and  terrible.  At  the  same  time  that  he  is  the  life,  the 
light,  the  movement,  the  ineffable  grace  of  visible  and  finite  na- 
ture, he  is  also  called  the  Eternal,  the  Invisible,  the  Infinite,  the 
Absolute  Unity,  and  the  Being  of  beings.  Do  not  these  awful 
attributes,  as  certain  as  the  first,  produce  in  the  highest  degree  in 
the  imagination  and  the  soul  that  melancholy  emotion  excited  by 
the  sublime  ?  Yes,  God  is  for  us  the  type  and  source  of  the  two 
great  forms  of  beauty,  because  he  is  to  us  at  once  an  impenetrable 
enigma  and  still  the  clearest  word  that  we  are  able  to  find  for  all 
enigmas.  Limited  beings  as  we  are,  we  comprehend  nothing  in 
comparison  with  that  which  is  without  limits,  and  we  are  able  to 
explain  nothing  without  that  same  thing  which  is  without  limits. 
By  the  being  that  we  possess,  we  have  some  idea  of  the  infinite 
being  of  God ;  by  the  nothingness  that  is  in  us,  we  lose  ourselves 
in  the  being  of  God ;  and  thus  always  forced  to  recur  to  him  in 
order  to  explain  any  thing,  and  always  thrown  back  within  our- 


152  LECTUEE   SEVENTH. 

selves  under  the  weight  of  his  infinitude,  we  experience  by  turns, 
or  rather  at  the  same  time,  for  this  God  who  raises  and  casts  us 
down,  a  sentiment  of  irresistible  attraction  and  astonishment,  not 
to  say  insurmountable  terror,  which  he  alone  can  cause  and 
allay,  because  he  alone  is  the  unity  of  the  sublime  and  the  beau- 
tiful 

Thus  absolute  being,  which  is  both  absolute  unity  and  infinite 
variety, — God,  is  necessarily  the  last  reason,  the  ultimate  foun- 
dation, the  completed  ideal  of  all  beauty.  This  is  the  marvellous 
beauty  that  Diotimus  had  caught  a  glimpse  of,  and  thus  paints 
to  Socrates  in  the  Banquet  : 

"  Eternal  beauty,  unbegotten  and  imperishable,  exempt  from 
decay  as  well  as  increase,  which  is  not  beautiful  in  such  a  part 
and  ugly  in  such  another,  beautiful  only,  at  such  a  time,  in  such 
a  place,  in  such  a  relation,  beautiful  for  some,  ugly  for  others, 
beauty  that  has  no  sensible  form,  no  visage,  no  hands,  nothing 
corporeal,  which  is  not  such  a  thought  or  such  a  particular 
science,  which  resides  not  in  any  being  different  from  itself,  as  an 
animal,  the  earth,  or  the  heavens,  or  any  other  thing,  which  is 
absolutely  identical  and  invariable  by  itself,  in  which  all  other 
beauties  participate,  in  such  a  way,  nevertheless,  that  their  birth 
or  their  destruction  neither  diminishes  nor  increases,  nor  in  the 

least  changes  it ! In  order  to  arrive  at  this  perfect  beauty, 

it  is  necessary  to  commence  with  the  beauties  of  this  lower  world, 
and,  the  eyes  being  fixed  upon  the  supreme  beauty,  to  elevate  our- 
selves unceasingly  towards  it,  by  passing,  thus  to  speak,  through 
all  the  degrees  of  the  scale,  from  a  single  beautiful  body  to  two, 
from  two  to  all  others,  from  beautiful  bodies  to  beautiful  senti- 
ments, from  beautiful  sentiments  to  beautiful  thoughts,  until  from 
thought  to  thought  we  arrive  at  the  highest  thought,  which  has 
no  other  object  than  the  beautiful  itself,  until  we  end  by  knowing 
it  as  it  is  in  itself. 

"O  my  dear  Socrates,"  continued  the  stranger  of  Mantinea, 
"  that  which  can  give  value  to  this  life  is  the  spectacle  of  the 
eternal  beauty.  .  .  .  What  would  be  the  destiny  of  a  mortal  to 


THE  BEAUTIFUL   IN   OBJECTS.  153 

whom  it  should  be  granted  to  contemplate  the  beautiful  without 
alloy,  in  its  purity  and  simplicity,  no  longer  clothed  with  the  flesh 
and  hues  of  humanity,  and  with  all  those  vain  charms  that  are 
condemned  to  perish,  to  whom  it  should  be  given  to  see  face  to 
face,  under  its  sole  form,  the  divine  beauty !"  l 

1  Vol  vi.  of  our  translation,  p.  816-318. 

T* 


LECTUKE  VIII. 

ON   ART. 

Genius : — its  attribute  is  creative  power. — Eefutation  of  the  opinion  that  art 
is  the  imitation  of  nature. — M.  Emeric  David,  and  M.  Quatremere  de 
Quincy. — Eefutation  of  the  theory  of  illusion.  That  dramatic  art  has  not 
solely  for  its  end  to  excite  the  passions  of  terror  and  pity. — Nor  even  di- 
rectly the  moral  and  religious  sentiment. — The  proper  and  direct  object  of 
art  is  to  produce  the  idea  and  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful ;  this  idea 
and  this  sentiment  purify  and  elevate  the  soul  by  the  affinity  between  the 
beautiful  and  the  good,  and  by  the  relation  of  ideal  beauty  to  its  principle, 
which  is  God. — True  mission  of  art. 

MAN  is  not  made  only  to  know  and  love  the  beautiful  in  the 
works  of  nature,  he  is  endowed  with  the  power  of  reproducing  it. 
At  the  sight  of  a  natural  beauty,  whatever  it  may  be,  physical  or 
moral,  his  first  need  is  to  feel  and  admire.  He  is  penetrated, 
ravished,  as  it  were  overwhelmed  with  the  sentiment  of  beauty. 
But  when  the  sentiment  is  energetic,  he  is  not  a  long  time  sterile. 
We  wish  to  see  again,  we  wish  to  feel  again  what  caused  us  so 
vivid  a  pleasure,  and  for  that  end  we  attempt  to  revive  the  beauty 
that  charmed  us,  not  as  it  was,  but  as  our  imagination  represents 
it  to  us.  Hence  a  work  original  and  peculiar  to  man,  a  work  of 
art.  Art  is  the  free  reproduction  of  beauty,  and  the  power  in  us 
capable  of  reproducing  it  is  called  genius. 

What  faculties  are  used  in  this  free  reproduction  of  the  beauti- 
ful ?  The  same  that  serve  to  recognize  and  feel  it.  Taste  carried 
to  the  highest  degree,  if  you  always  join  to  it  an  additional  ele- 
ment, is  genius.  What  is  this  element  ? 

Three  faculties  enter  into  that  complex  faculty  that  is  called 
taste, — imagination,  sentiment,  reason. 


ON   ART.  155 

These  three  faculties  are  certainly  necessary  for  genius,  but 
they  are  not  sufficient  for  it.  What  essentially  distinguishes 
genius  from  taste  is  the  attribute  of  creative  power.  Taste  feels, 
judges,  discusses,  analyzes,  but  does  not  invent.  Genius  is,  before 
all,  inventive  and  creative.  The  man  of  genius  is  not  the  master 
of  the  power  that  is  in  him ;  it  is  by  the  ardent,  irresistible  need 
of  expressing  what  he  feels,  that  he  is  a  man  of  genius.  He  suf- 
fers by  withholding  the  sentiments,  or  images,  or  thoughts,  that 
agitate  his  breast.  It  has  been  said  that  there  is  no  superior  man 
without  some  grain  of  folly ;  but  this  folly,  like  that  of  the  cross, 
is  the  divine  part  of  reason.  This  mysterious  power  Socrates 
called  his  demon.  Voltaire  called  it  the  devil  in  the  body ;  he 
demanded  it  even  in  a  comedian  in  order  to  be  a  comedian  of 
genius.  Give  to  it  what  name  you  please,  it  is  certain  that  there 
is  a  I-know-not-what  that  inspires  genius,  that  also  torments  it 
until  it  has  delivered  itself  of  what  consumes  it ;  until,  by  ex- 
pressing them,  it  has  solaced  its  pains  and  its  joys,  its  emotions, 
its  ideas ;  until  its  reveries  have  become  living  works.  Thus  two 
things  characterize  genius ;  at  first,  the  vivacity  of  the  need  it  has 
of  producing,  then  the  power  of  producing ;  for  the  need  without 
the  power  is  only  a  malady  that  resembles  genius,  but  is  not  it. 
Genius  is  above  all,  is  essentially,  the  power  of  doing,  of  inventing, 
of  creating.  Taste  is  contented  with  observing,  with  admiring. 
False  genius,  ardent  and  impotent  imagination,  consumes  itself  in 
sterile  dreams  and  produces  nothing,  at  least  nothing  great.  Ge- 
nius alone  has  the  power  to  convert  conceptions  into  creations. 

If  genius  creates  it  does  not  imitate. 

But  genius,  it  is  said,  is  then  superior  to  nature,  since  it  does 
not  imitate  it.  Nature  is  the  work  of  God ;  man  is  then  the  rival 
of  God. 

The  answer  is  very  simple.  No,  genius  is  not  the  rival  of  God ; 
but  it  is  the  interpreter  of  him.  Nature  expresses  him  in  its  way, 
human  genius  expresses  him  in  its  own  way. 

Let  us  stop  a  moment  at  that  question  so  much  discussed, — 
whether  art  is  any  thing  else  than  the  imitation  of  nature. 


156  LECTURE   EIGHTH. 

Doubtless,  in  one  sense,  art  is  an  imitation ;  for  absolute  crea- 
tion belongs  only  to  God.  Where  can  genius  find  the  elements 
upon  which  it  works,  except  in  nature,  of  which  it  forms  a  part  ? 
But  does  it  limit  itself  to  the  reproduction  of  them  as  nature  fur- 
nishes them  to  it,  without  adding  any  thing  to  them  which  belongs 
to  itself?  Is  it  only  a  copier  of  reality  ?  Its  sole  merit,  then,  is 
that  of  the  fidelity  of  the  copy.  And  what  labor  is  more  sterile 
than  that  of  copying  works  essentially  inimitable  on  account  of 
the  life  with  which  they  are  endowed,  in  order  to  obtain  an  indif- 
ferent image  of  them  1  If  art  is  a  servile  pupil,  it  is  condemned 
never  to  be  any  thing  but  an  impotent  pupil. 

The  true  artist  feels  and  profoundly  admires  nature ;  but  every 
thing  in  nature  is  not  equally  admirable.  As  we  have  just  said, 
it  has  something  by  which  it  infinitely  surpasses  art — its  life. 
Besides  that,  art  can,  in  its  turn,  surpass  nature,  on  the  condition 
of  not  wishing  to  imitate  it  too  closely.  Every  natural  object, 
however  beautiful,  is  defective  on  some  side.  Every  thing  that  is 
real  is  imperfect.  Here,  the  horrible  and  the  hideous  are  united 
to  the  sublime ;  there,  elegance  and  grace  are  separated  from 
grandeur  and  force.  The  traits  of  beauty  are  scattered  and  di- 
verse. To  reunite  them  arbitrarily,  to  borrow  from  such  a  face  a 
mouth,  eyes  from  such  another,  without  any  rule  that  governs 
this  choice  and  directs  these  borrowings,  is  to  compose  monsters  ; 
to  admit  a  rule,  is  already  to  admit  an  ideal  different  from  all  in- 
dividuals. It  is  this  ideal  that  the  true  artist  forms  to  himself  in 
studying  nature.  Without  nature,  he  never  would  have  conceived 
this  ideal ;  but  with  this  ideal,  he  judges  nature  herself,  rectifies 
her,  and  dares  undertake  to  measure  himself  with  her. 

The  ideal  is  the  artist's  object  of  passionate  contemplation. 
Assiduously  and  silently  meditated,  unceasingly  purified  by  re- 
flection and  vivified  by  sentiment,  it  warms  genius  and  inspires  it 
with  the  irresistible  need  of  seeing  it  realized  and  living.  For 
this  end,  genius  takes  in  nature  all  the  materials  that  can  serve 
it,  and  applying  to  them  its  powerful  hand,  as  Michael  Angelo 
impressed  his  chisel  upon  the  docile  marble,  makes  of  them  works 


ON    ART. 

that  have  no  model  in  nature,  that  imitate  nothing  else  than  the 
ideal  dreamed  of  or  conceived,  that  are  in  some  sort  a  second 
creation  inferior  to  the  first  in  individuality  and  life,  but  much 
superior  to  it,  we  do  not  fear  to  say,  on  account  of  the  intellectual 
and  moral  beauty  with  which  it  is  impressed. 

Moral  beauty  is  the  foundation  of  all  true  beauty.  This  foun- 
dation is  somewhat  covered  and  veiled  in  nature.  Art  disengages 
it,  and  gives  to  it  forms  more  transparent.  On  this  account,  art, 
when  it  knows  well  its  power  and  its  resources,  institutes  with 
nature  a  contest  in  which  it  may  have  the  advantage. 

Let  us  establish  well  the  end  of  art :  it  is  precisely  where  its 
power  lies.  The  end  of  art  is  the  expression  of  moral  beauty,  by 
the  aid  of  physical  beauty.  The  latter  is  only  a  symbol  of  the 
former.  In  nature,  this  symbol  is  often  obscure :  art  in  bringing 
it  to  light  attains  effects  that  nature  does  not  always  produce 
Nature  may  please  more,  for,  once  more,  it  possesses  in  an  in- 
comparable degree  what  makes  the  great  charm  of  imagination 
and  sight — life ;  art  touches  more,  because  in  expressing,  above 
all,  moral  beauty,  it  addresses  itself  more  directly  to  the  source 
of  profound  emotions.  Art  can  be  more  pathetic  than  nature, 
and  the  pathetic  is  the  sign  and  measure  of  great  beauty. 

Two  extremes  are  equally  dangerous — a  lifeless  ideal,  or  the 
absence  of  the  ideal.  Either  we  copy  the  model,  and  are  want- 
ing in  true  beauty,  or  we  work  de  t&te,  and  fall  into  an  ideality 
without  character.  Genius  is  a  ready  and  sure  perception  of  the 
right  proportion  in  which  the  ideal  and  the  natural,  form  and 
thought,  ought  to  be  united.  This  union  is  the  perfection  of 
art :  chefs-d'oeuvre  are  produced  by  observing  it. 

It  is  important,  in  my  opinion,  to  follow  this  rule  in  teaching 
art.  It  is  asked  whether  pupils  should  begin  with  the  study  of 
the  ideal  or  the  real.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  answer, — by  both. 
Nature  herself  never  offers  the  general  without  the  individual, 
nor  the  individual  without  the  general.  Every  figure  is  composed 
of  individual  traits  which  distinguish  it  from  all  others,  and  make 
its  own  looks,  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  has  general  traits  which 


158  LECTURE  EIGHTH. 

constitute  what  is  called  the  human  figure.  These  general  traits 
are  the  constitutive  lineaments,  and  this  figure  is  the  type,  that 
are  given  to  the  pupil  that  is  beginning  in  the  art  of  design  to 
trace.  It  would  also  be  good,  I  believe,  in  order  to  preserve  him 
from  the  dry  and  abstract,  to  exercise  him  early  in  copying  some 
natural  object,  especially  a  living  figure.  This  would  be  putting 
pupils  to  the  true  school  of  nature.  They  would  thus  become 
accustomed  never  to  sacrifice  either  of  the  two  essential  elements 
of  the  beautiful,  either  of  the  two  imperative  conditions  of  art. 

But,  in  uniting  these  two  Clements,  these  two  conditions,  it  is 
necessary  to  distinguish  them,  and  to  know  how  to  put  them  in 
their  place.     There  is  no  true  ideal  without  determinate  form 
there  is  no  unity  without  variety,  no  genus  without  individuals 
out,  in  fine,  the  foundation  of  the  beautiful  is  the  idea ;  what 
makes  art  is  before  all,  the  realization  of  the  idea,  and  not  the 
imitation  of  such  or  such  a  particular  form. 

At  the  commencement  of  our  century,  the  Institute  of  France 
offered  a  prize  for  the  best  answer  to  the  following  question  : 
What  were  the  causes  of  the  perfection  of  the  antique  sculpture, 
and  what  would  be  the  best  means  of  attaining  it  ?  The  success- 
ful competitor,  M.  Emeric  David,1  maintained  the  opinion  then 
dominant,  that  the  assiduous  study  of  natural  beauty  had  alone 
conducted  the  antique  art  to  perfection,  and  that  thus  the  imita- 
tion of  nature  was  the  only  route  to  reach  the  same  perfection. 
A  man  whom  I  do  not  fear  to  compare  with  Winkelmann,  the 
future  author  of  the  Olympic  Jupiter?  M.  Quatremere  de  Quincy, 
in  some  ingenious  and  profound  disquisitions,3  combated  the  doc- 
trine of  the  laureate,  and  defended  the  cause  of  ideal  beauty.  It 
is  impossible  to  demonstrate  more  decidedly,  by  the  entire  history 
of  Greek  sculpture,  and  by  authentic  texts  from  the  greatest  cri- 


1  Recherches  sur  VArt  Statuaire.    Paris,  1805. 

*  Paris,  1815,  in  folio,  an  eminent  work  that  will  subsist  even  when  time 
shall  have  destroyed  some  of  its  details. 

3  Since  reprinted  under  the  title  of  Essais  sur  V  Ideal  dans  ses  Affixation* 
Pratiques.  Paris,  1837. 


ON   ART. 

tiques  of  antiquity,  that  the  process  of  art  among  the  Greeks  was 
not  the  imitation  of  nature,  either  by  a  particular  model,  or  by 
several,  the  most  beautiful  model  being  always  very  imperfect, 
and  several  models  not  being  able  to  compose  a  single  beauty. 
The  true  process  of  the  Greek  art  was  the  representation  of  an 
ideal  beauty  which  nature  scarcely  possessed  more  in  Greece  than 
among  us,  which  it  could  not  then  offer  to  the  artist.  We  regret 
that  the  honorable  laureate,  since  become  a  member  of  the  Insti- 
tute, pretended  that  this  expression  of  ideal  beauty,  if  it  had  been 
known  by  the  Greeks,  would  have  meant  visible  beauty,  because 
ideal  comes  from  slSos,  which  signifies  only,  according  to  M. 
Emeric  David,  a  form  seen  by  the  eye.  Plato  would  have  been 
much  surprised  at  this  exclusive  interpretation  of  the  word  slSog. 
M.  Quatremere  de  Quincy  confounds  his  unequal  adversary  by 
two  admirable  texts,  one  from  the  Timceus,  where  Plato  marks 
with  precision  in  what  the  true  artist  is  superior  to  the  ordinary 
artist,  the  other  at  the  commencement  of  the  Orator,  where 
Cicero  explains  the  manner  in  which  great  artists  work,  in  refer- 
ring to  the  manner  of  Phidias,  that  is  to  say,  the  most  perfect 
master  of  the  most  perfect  epoch  of  art. 

"  The  artist,1  who,  with  eye  fixed  upon  the  immutable  being, 
and  using  such  a  model,  reproduces  its  idea  and  its  excellence, 
cannot  fail  to  produce  a  whole  whose  beauty  is  complete,  whilst 
lie  who  fixes  his  eye  upon  what  is  transitory,  with  this  perishable 
model  will  make  nothing  beautiful." 

"  Phidias,8  that  great  artist,  when  he  made  the  form  of  Jupiter 
or  Minerva,  did  not  contemplate  a  model  a  resemblance  of  which 
he  would  express ;  but  in  the  depth  of  his  soul  resided  a  perfect 
type  of  beauty,  upon  which  he  fixed  his  look, 'which  guided  his 
hand  and  his  art." 


1  Translation  of  Plato,  vol.  xii.,  Timcem,  p.  116. 

*  Orator:  "Neque  eriim  ille  artifex  (Phidias)  cum  faceret  Jovis  formaui 
aut  Minervse,  conteraplabatur  aliquem  a  quo  similitudinem  duceret;  sed 
ipsius  in  mente  insidebat  species  pulchritudinis  eximia  qusedam,  quam  intn* 
ens,  in  eaque  deflxus,  ad  illius  siroilitudinem  artera  et  manum  dirigebat." 


160  LECTURE   EIGHTH. 

Is  not  this  process  of  Phidias  precisely  that  which  Raphael  de- 
scribes in  the  famous  letter  to  Castiglione,  which  he  declares  that  he 
followed  himself  for  the  Galatea  ? l  "  As,"  he  says,  "  I  am  destitute 
of  beautiful  models,  I  use  a  certain  ideal  which  I  form  for  myself." 

There  is  another  theory  which  comes  back,  by  a  circuit,  to 
imitation  :  it  is  that  which  makes  illusion  the  end  of  art.  If  this 
theory  be  true,  the  ideal  beauty  of  painting  is  a  tromp-Vceil?  and 
its  master-piece  is  the  grapes  of  Zeuxis  that  the  birds  came  and 
pecked  at.  The  height  of  art  in  a  theatrical  piece  would  be  to 
persuade  you  that  you  are  in  the  presence  of  reality.  What  is 
true  in  this  opinion  is,  that  a  work  of  art  is  beautiful  only  on  the 
condition  of  being  life-like,  and,  for  example,  the  law  of  dramatic 
art  is  not  to  put  on  the  stage  pale  phantoms  of  the  past,  but  per- 
sonages borrowed  from  imagination  or  history,  as  you  like,  but 
animated,  endowed  with  passion,  speaking  and  acting  like  men 
and  not  like  shades.  It  is  human  nature  that  is  to  be  represented 
to  itself  under  a  magic  light  that  does  not  disfigure  it,  but  en- 
nobles it.  This  magic  is  the  very  genius  of  art.  It  lifts  us  above 
the  miseries  that  besiege  us,  and  transports  us  to  regions  where 
we  still  find  ourselves,  for  we  never  wish  to  lose  sight  of  our- 
selves, but  where  we  find  ourselves  transformed  to  our  advantage, 
where  all  the  imperfections  of  reality  have  given  place  to  a  cer- 
tain perfection,  where  the  language  that  we  speak  is  more  equal 
and  elevated,  where  persons  are  more  beautiful,  where  the  ugly 
is  not  admitted,  and  all  this  while  duly  respecting  history,  espe- 
cially without  ever  going  beyond  the  imperative  conditions  of 
human  nature.  Has  art  forgotten  human  nature  ?  it  has  passed 
beyond  its  end,  it  has  not  attained  it;  it  has  brought  forth 
nothing  but  chimeras  without  interest  for  our  soul.  Has  it  been 
too  human,  too  real,  too  nude  ?  it  has  fallen  short  of  its  end ;  it 
has  then  attained  it  no  better. 


1  Raccolta  di  lett.    Sulla  pitt.,  i.,  p.  83.     "  Es&endo  carestla  e  de1  buoni  giu- 
did  e  di  'belle  donne,  io  mi  serw  di  certa  idea  che  mi  viene  alia  rnente.'1'' 

2  "A  picture  representing  a  broken  glass  over  several  subjects  painted  oil 
the  canvas,  by  which,  the  eye  is-  deceived." 


ON   ART.  161 

Illusion  is  so  little  the  end  of  art,  that  it  may  be  complete  and 
have  no  charm.  Thus,  in  the  interest  of  illusion,  theatrical  men 
have  taken  great  pains  in  these  latter  times  to  secure  historical 
accuracy  of  costume.  This  is  all  very  well ;  but  it  is  not  the 
most  important  thing.  Had  you  found,  and  lent  to  the  actor 
who  plays  the  part  of  Brutus,  the  very  costume  that  of  old  the 
Roman  hero  wore,  it  would  touch  true  connoisseurs  very  little. 
This  is  not  all ;  when  the  illusion  goes  too  far,  the  sentiment  of 
art  disappears  in  order  to  give  place  to  a  sentiment  purely  natu- 
ral, sometimes  insupportable.  If  I  believed  that  Iphegenia  were 
in  fact  on  the  point  of  being  immolated  by  her  father  at  a  dis- 
tance of  twenty  paces  from  me,  I  should  leave  the  theatre  trem- 
bling with  horror.  If  the  Ariadne  that  I  see  and  hear,  were  the 
true  Ariadne  who  is" about  to  be  betrayed  by  her  sister,  in  that 
pathetic  scene  where  the  poor  woman,  who  already  feels  herself 
less  loved,  asks  who  then  robs  her  of  the  heart,  once  so  tender,  of 
Theseus,  I  would  do  as  the  young  Englishman  did,  who  cried 
out,  sobbing  and  trying  to  spring  upon  the  stage,  "  It  is  Phedre. 
it  is  Phedre !"  as  if  he  would  warn  and  save  Ariadne. 

But,  it  is  said,  is  it  not  the  aim  of  the  poet  to  excite  pity  and 
terror  ?  Yes  ;  but  at  first  in  a  certain  measure ;  then  he  must 
mix  with  them  some  other  sentiment  that  tempers  them,  or 
makes  them  serve  another  end.  If  the  aim  of  dramatic  art  were 
only  to  excite  in  the  highest  degree  pity  and  terror,  art  would  be- 
the  powerless  rival  of  nature.  All  the  misfortunes  represented 
on  the  stage  are  very  feeble  in  comparison  with  those  sad  specta- 
cles which  we  may  see  every  day.  The  first  hospital  is  fuller  of 
pity  and  terror  than  all  the  theatres  in  the  world.  What  should 
the  poet  do  in  the  theory  that  we  combat  ?  He  should  transfer 
to  the  stage  the  greatest  possible  reality,  and  move  us  powerfully 
by  shocking  our  senses  with  the  sight  of  frightful  pains.  The 
great  resort  of  the  pathetic  would  then  be  the  representation  of 
death,  especially  that  of  the  greatest  torture.  Quite  on  the  con- 
trary, there  is  an  end  of  art  when  sensibility  is  too  much  excited. 
To  take,  again,  an  example  that  we  have  already  employed,  what 


162  LECTUKE   EIGHTH. 

constitutes  the  beauty  of  a  tempest,  of  a  shipwreck  ?  What  at- 
tracts us  to  those  great  scenes  of  nature  ?  It  is  certainly  not  pity 
and  terror, — these  poignant  and  lacerating  sentiments  would 
much  sooner  keep  us  away.  An  emotion  very  different  from 
these  is  necessary,  which  triumphs  over  us,  in  order  to  retain  us 
by  the  shore ;  this  emotion  is  the  pure  sentiment  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  sublime,  excited  and  kept  alive  by  the  grandeur  of  the 
spectacle,  by  the  vast  extent  of  the  sea,  the  rolling  of  the  foaming 
waves,  and  the  imposing  sound  of  the  thunder.  But  do  we 
think  for  a  single  instant  that  there  are  in  the  midst  of  the  sea 
the  unfortunate  who  are  suffering,  and  are,  perhaps,  about  to 
perish  ?  From  that  moment  the  spectacle  becomes  to  us  insup- 
portable. It  is  so  in  art.  Whatever  sentiment  it  proposes  to 
excite  in  us,  must  always  be  tempered  and  governed  by  that  of 
the  beautiful.  If  it  only  produces  pity  or  terror  beyond  a  certain 
limit,  especially  physical  pity  or  terror,  it  revolts,  and  no  longer 
charms  ;  it  loses  the  effect  that  belongs  to  it  in  exchange  for  a 
foreign  and  vulgar  effect. 

For  this  same  reason,  I  cannot  accept  another  theory,  which, 
confounding  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  with  the  moral  and 
religious  sentiment,  puts  art  in  the  service  of  religion  and  morals, 
and  gives  it  for  its  end  to  make  us  better  and  elevate  us  to  God. 
There  is  here  an  essential  distinction  to  be  made.  If  all  beauty 
covers  a  moral  beauty,  if  the  ideal  mounts  unceasingly  towards 
the  infinite,  art,  which  expresses  ideal  beauty,  purifies  the  soul  in 
elevating  it  towards  the  infinite,  that  is  to  say,  towards  God. 
Art,  then,  produces  the  perfection  of  the  soul,  but  it  produces  it 
indirectly.  The  philosopher  who  investigates  effects  and  causes, 
knows  what  is  the  ultimate  principle  of  the  beautiful  and  its  cer- 
tain, although  remote,  effects.  But  the  artist  is  before  all  things 
an  artist ;  what  animates  him  is  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful ; 
what  he  wishes  to  make  pass  into  the  soul  of  the  spectator  is  the 
same  sentiment  that  fills  his  own.  He  confides  himself  to  the 
virtue  of  beauty ;  he  fortifies  it  with  all  the  power,  all  the  charm 
of  the  ideal ;  it  must  then  do  its  own  work ;  the  artist  has  done 


ON    ART.  163 

his  when  he  has  procured  for  some  noble  souls  the  exquisite  sen- 
timent of  beauty.  This  pure  and  disinterested  sentiment  is  a 
noble  ally  of  the  moral  and  religious  sentiments;  it  awakens, 
preserves,  and  develops  them,  but  it  is  a  distinct  and  special  sen- 
timent. So  art,  which  is  founded  on  this  sentiment,  which  is 
inspired  by  it,  which  expands  it,  is  in  its  turn  an  independent 
power.  It  is  naturally  associated  with  all  that  ennobles  the  soul, 
with  morals  and  religion ;  but  it  springs  only  from  itself. 

Let  us  confine  our  thought  strictly  within  its  proper  limits. 
In  vindicating  the  independence,  the  proper  dignity,  and  the  par- 
ticular end  of  art,  we  do  not  intend  to  separate  it  from  religion, 
from  morals,  from  country.  Art  draws  its  inspirations  from  these 
profound  sources,  as  well  as  from  the  ever  open  source  of  nature. 
But  it  is  not  less  true  that  art,  the  state,  religion,  are  powers 
which  have  each  their  world  apart  and  their  own  effects ;  they 
mutually  help  each  other;  they  should  not  serve  each  other. 
As  soon  as  one  of  them  wanders  from  its  end,  it  errs,  and  is  degra- 
ded. Does  art  blindly  give  itself  up  to  the  orders  of  religion  and 
the  state  ?  In  losing  its  liberty,  it  loses  its  charm  and  its  empire. 

Ancient  Greece  and  modern  Italy  are  continually  cited  as  tri- 
umphant examples  of  what  the  alliance  of  art,  religion,  and  the 
state  can  do.  Nothing  is  more  true,  if  the  question  is  concerning 
their  union ;  nothing  is  more  false,  if  the  question  is  concerning 
the  servitude  of  art.  Art  in  Greece  was  so  little  the  slave  of 
religion,  that  it  little  by  little  modified  the  symbols,  and,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  the  spirit  itself,  by  its  free  representations.  There  is 
a  long  distance  between  the  divinities  that  Greece  received  from 
Egypt  and  those  of  which  it  has  left  immortal  exemplars.  Are 
those  primitive  artists  and  poets,  as  Homer  and  Dedalus  are 
called,  strangers  to  this  change?  And  in  the  most  beautiful 
epoch  of  art,  did  not  ^Eschylus  and  Phidias  carry  a  great  liberty 
into  the  religious  scenes  which  they  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  the 
people,  in  the  theatre,  or  in  front  of  the  temples  ?  In  Italy  as  in 
Greece,  as  everywhere,  art  is  at  first  in  the  hands  of  priesthoods 
and  governments ;  but,  as  it  increases  its  importance  and  is  de- 


164  LECTURE   EIGHTH. 

veloped,  it  more  and  more  conquers  its  liberty.  Men  speak  of 
the  faith  that  animated  the  artists  and  vivified  their  works  ;  that 
is  true  of  the  time  of  Giotto  and  Ciambue ;  but  after  Angelico 
de  Fiesole,  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  in  Italy,  I  perceive 
especially  the  faith  of  art  in  itself  and  the  worship  of  beauty. 
Raphael  was  about  to  become  a  cardinal  ;l  yes,  but  always  paint- 
ing Galatea,  and  without  quitting  Fornarine.  Once  more,  let  us 
exaggerate  nothing ;  let  us  distinguish,  not  separate ;  let  us  unite 
art,  religion,  and  country,  but  let  not  their  union  injure  the  lib- 
erty of  each.  Let  us  be  thoroughly  penetrated  with  the  thought, 
that  art  is  also  to  itself  a  kind  of  religion.  God  manifests  himself  to 
us  by  the  idea  of  the  true,  by  the  idea  of  the  good,  by  the  idea 
of  the  beautiful.  Each  one  of  them  leads  to  God,  because  it 
comes  from  him.  True  beauty  is  ideal  beauty,  and  ideal  beauty 
is  a  reflection  of  the  infinite.  So,  independently  of  all  official 
alliance  with  religion  and  morals,  art  is  by  itself  essentially  reli- 
gious and  moral ;  for,  far  from  wanting  its  own  law,  its  own 
genius,  it  everywhere  expresses  in  its  works  eternal  beauty. 
Bound  on  all  sides  to  matter  by  inflexible  laws,  working  upon 
inanimate  stone,  upon  uncertain  and  fugitive  sounds,  upon  words 
of  limited  and  finite  signification,  art  communicates  to  them,  with 
the  precise  form  that  is  addressed  to  such  or  such  a  sense,  a  mys- 
terious character  that  is  addressed  to  the  imagination  and  the 
soul,  takes  them  away  from  reality,  and  bears  them  sweetly  or 
violently  into  unknown  regions.  Every  work  of  art,  whatever 
may  be  its  form,  small  or  great,  figured,  sung,  or  uttered, — every 
work  of  art,  truly  beautiful  or  sublime,  throws  the  soul  into  a 
gentle  or  severe  reverie  that  elevates  it  towards  the  infinite.  The 
infinite  is  the  common  limit  after  which  the  soul  aspires  upon  the 
wings  of  imagination  as  well  as  reason,  by  the  route  of  the  sub- 
lime and  the  beautiful,  as  well  as  by  that  of  the  true  and  the  good. 
The  emotion  that  the  beautiful  produces  turns  the  soul  from  this 
world ;  it  is  the  beneficent  emotion  that  art  produces  for  humanity. 

1  Vassari,  Fie  de  Raphael. 


LECTUEE   IX. 

THE    DIFFERENT    ARTS. 

Expression  is  the  general  law  of  art. — Division  of  arts. — Distinction  between 
liberal  arts  and  trades. — Eloquence  itself,  philosophy,  and  history  do  not 
make  a  part  of  the  fine  arts. — That  the  arts  gain  nothing  by  encroaching 
upon  each  other,  and  usurping  each  other's  means  and  processes. — Classi- 
fication of  the  arts : — its  true  principle  is  expression. — Comparison  of  arts 
with  each  other. — Poetry  the  first  of  arts. 

A  resume  of  the  last  lecture  would  be  a  definition  of  art,  of  its 
end  and  law.  Art  is  the  free  reproduction  of  the  beautiful,  not  of  a 
single  natural  beauty,  but  of  ideal  beauty,  as  the  human  imagina- 
tion conceives  it  by  the  aid  of  data  which  nature  furnishes  it. 
The  ideal  beauty  envelops  the  infinite : — the  end  of  art  is,  then, 
to  produce  works  that,  like  those  of  nature,  or  even  in  a  still 
higher  degree,  may  have  the  charm  of  the  infinite.  But  how 
and  by  what  illusion  can  we  draw  the  infinite  from  the  finite  ? 
This  is  the  difficulty  of  art,  and  its  glory  also.  What  bears  us 
towards  the  infinite  in  natural  beauty  ?  The  ideal  side  of  this 
beauty.  The  ideal  is  the  mysterious  ladder  that  enables  the  soul 
to  ascend  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite.  The  artist,  then,  must 
devote  himself  to  the  representation  of  the  ideal.  Every  thing 
has  its  ideal.  The  first  care  of  the  artist  will  be,  then,  whatever 
he  does,  to  penetrate  at  first  to  the  concealed  ideal  of  his  subject, 
for  his  subject  has  an  ideal, — in  order  to  render  it,  in  the  next 
place,  more  or  less  striking  to  the  senses  and  the  soul,  according 
to  the  conditions  which  the  very  materials  that  he  employs — the 
stone,  the  color,  the  sound,  the  language — impose  on  him. 

So,  to  express  the  ideal  of  the  infinite  in  one  way  or  another,  is 
the  law  of  art ;  and  all  the  arts  are  such  only  by  their  relation  to 


166  LECTURE    NINTH. 

the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  and  the  infinite  which  they  awa- 
ken in  the  soul,  by  the*  aid  of  that  high  quality  of  every  work  of 
art  that  is  called  expression. 

Expression  is  essentially  ideal :  what  expression  tries  to  make 
felt,  is  not  what  the  eye  can  see  and  the  hand  touch,  evidently  it 
is  something  invisible  and  impalpable. 

The  problem  of  art  is  to  reach  the  soul  through  the  body.  Art 
offers  to  the  senses  forms,  colors,  sounds,  words,  so  arranged  that 
they  excite  in  the  soul,  concealed  behind  the  senses,  the  inex- 
pressible emotion  of  beauty. 

Expression  is  addressed  to  the  soul  as  form  is  addressed  to  the 
senses.  Form  is  the  obstacle  of  expression,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  is  its  imperative,  necessary,  only  means.  By  working  upon 
form,  by  bending  it  to  its  service,  by  dint  of  care,  patience,  and 
genius,  art  succeeds  in  converting  an  obstacle  into  a  means. 

By  their  object,  all  arts  are  equal ;  all  are  arts  only  because 
they  express  the  invisible.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  that 
expression  is  the  supreme  law  of  art.  The  thing  to  express  is 
always  the  same, — it  is  the  idea,  the  spirit,  the  soul,  the  invisible, 
the  infinite.  But,  as  the  question  is  concerning  the  expression  of 
this  one  and  the  same  thing,  by  addressing  ourselves  to  the  senses 
which  are  diverse,  the  difference  of  the  senses  divides  art  into  dif- 
ferent arts. 

We  have  seen,  that,  of  the  five  senses  which  have  been  given 
to  man,1  three — taste,  smell,  and  touch — are  incapable  of  pro- 
ducing in  us  the  sentiment  of  beauty.  Joined  to  the  other  two, 
they  may  contribute  to  the  understanding  of  this  sentiment ;  but 
alone  and  by  themselves  they  cannot  produce  it.  Taste  judges 
of  the  agreeable,  not  of  the  beautiful.  No  sense  is  less  allied  to 
the  soul  and  more  in  the  service  of  the  body ;  it  flatters,  it  serves 
the  grossest  of  all  masters,  the  stomach.  If  smell  sometimes 
seems  to  participate  in  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful,  it  is  be- 
cause the  odor  is  exhaled  from  an  object  that  is  already  beautiful, 

1  Lecture  6. 


THE   DIFFERENT   AKTS.  167 

that  is  beautiful  for  some  other  reason.  Thus  the  rose  is  beau- 
tiful for  its  graceful  form,  for  the  varied  'splendor  of  its  colors ; 
its  odor  is  agreeable,  it  is  not  beautiful.  Finally,  it  is  not  touch 
alone  that  judges  of  the  regularity  of  forms,  but  touch  enlight- 
ened by  sight. 

There  remain  two  senses  to  which  all  the  world  concedes  the 
privilege  of  exciting  in  us  the  idea  and  the  sentiment  of  the  beau- 
tiful. They  seem  to  be  more  particularly  in  the  service  of  the 
soul.  The  sensations  which  they  give  have  something  purer, 
more  intellectual.  They  are  less  indispensable  for  the  material 
preservation  of  the  individual.  They  contribute  to  the  embellish- 
ment rather  than  to  the  sustaining  of  life.  They  procure  us 
pleasures  in  which  our  personality  seems  less  interested  and  more 
self-forgetful.  To  these  two  senses,  then,  art  should  be  addressed, 
is  addressed,  in  fact,  in  order  to  reach  the  soul.  Hence  the 
division  of  arts  into  two  great  classes, — arts  addressed  to  hearing, 
arts  addressed  to  sight ;  on  the  one  hand,  music  and  poetry ;  on 
the  other,  painting,  with  engraving,  sculpture,  architecture,  gar- 
dening. 

It  will,  perhaps,  seem  strange  that  we  rank  among  the  arts 
neither  eloquence,  nor  history,  nor  philosophy. 

The  arts  are  called  the  fine  arts,  because  their  sole  object  is  to 
produce  the  disinterested  emotion  of  beauty,  without  regard  to 
the  utility  either  of  the  spectator  or  the  artist.  They  are  also 
called  the  liberal  arts,  because  they  are  the  arts  of  free  men  and 
not  of  slaves,  which  affranchise  the  soul,  charm  and  ennoble  ex- 
istence ;  hence  the  sense  and  origin  of  those  expressions  of  anti- 
quity, dries  liberates,  artes  ingenuce.  There  are  arts  without  no- 
bility, whose  end  is  practical  and  material  utility ;  they  are  called 
trades,  such  as  that  of  the  stove-maker  and  the  mason.  True  art 
may  be  joined  to  them,  may  even  shine  in  them,  but  only  in  the 
accessories  and  the  details. 

Eloquence,  history,  philosophy,  are  certainly  high  employments 
of  intelligence ;  they  have  their  dignity,  their  eminence,  which 
nothing  surpasses,  but  rigorously  speaking,  they  are  not  arts. 


168  LECTURE    NINTH. 

Eloquence  does  not  propose  to  itself  to  produce  in  the  soul  of 
the  auditors  the  disinterested  sentiment  of  beauty.  It  may  also 
produce  this  effect,  but  without  having  sought  it.  Its  direct 
end,  which  it  can  subordinate  to  no  other,  is  to  convince,  to  per- 
suade. Eloquence  has  a  client  which  before  all  it  must  save  or 
make  triumph.  It  matters  little,  whether  this  client  be  a  man,  a 
people,  or  an  idea.  Fortunate  is  the  orator  if  he  elicits  the  ex- 
pression :  That  is  beautiful !  for  it  is  a  noble  homage  rendered  to 
his  talent ;  unfortunate  is  he  if  he  does  not  elicit  this,  for  he  has 
missed  his  end.  The  two  great  types  of  political  and  religious 
eloquence,  Demosthenes  in  antiquity,  Bossuet  among  the  mod- 
erns, think  only  of  the  interest  of  the  cause  confided  to  their 
genius,  the  sacred  cause  of  country  and  that  of  religion ;  whilst 
at  bottom  Phidias  and  Raphael  work  to  make  beautiful  things. 
Let  us  hasten  to  say,  what  the  names  of  Demosthenes  and  Bos- 
suet  command  us  to  say,  that  true  eloquence,  very  different  from 
that  of  rhetoric,  disdains  certain  means  of  success ;  it  asks  no 
more  than  to  please,  but  without  any  sacrifice  unworthy  of  it ; 
every  foreign  ornament  degrades  it.  Its  proper  character  is  sim- 
plicity, earnestness — I  do  not  mean  affected  earnestness,  a  de- 
signed and  artful  gravity,  the  worst  of  all  deceptions — I  mean 
true  earnestness,  that  springs  from  sincere  and  profound  convic- 
tion. This  is  what  Socrates  understood  by  true  eloquence.1 

As  much  must  be  said  of  history  and  philosophy.  The  phi- 
losopher speaks  and  writes.  Can  he,  then,  like  the  orator,  find 
accents  which  make  truth  enter  the  soul,  colors  and  forms  that 
make  it  shine  forth  evident  and  manifest  to  the  eyes  of  intelli- 
gence ?  It  would  be  betraying  his  cause  to  neglect  the  means 
that  can  serve  it ;  but  the  profoundest  art  is  here  only  a  means, 
the  aim  of  philosophy  is  elsewhere  ;  whence  it  follows  that  phi- 
losophy is  not  an  art.  Without  doubt,  Plato  is  a  great  artist ; 
he  is  the  peer  of  Sophocles  and  Phidias,  as  Pascal  is  sometimes 


1  See  the   Gorgias,  with  the  Argument,  vol.  iii.  of  our  translation  of 
Plato. 


THE  DIFFERENT  ARTS.  169 

the  rival  of  Demosthenes  and  Bossuet  j1  but  both  would  have 
blushed  if  they  had  discovered  at  the  bottom  of  their  soul  another 
design,  another  aim  than  the  service  of  truth  and  virtue. 

History  does  not  relate  for  the  sake  of  relating ;  it  does  not 
paint  for  the  sake  of  painting  ;  it  relates  and  paints  the  past  that 
it  may  be  the  living  lesson  of  the  future.  It  proposes  to  instruct 
new  generations  by  the  experience  of  those  who  have  gone  before 
them,  by  exhibiting  to  them  a  faithful  picture  of  great  and  impor- 
tant events,  with  their  causes  and  their  effects,  with  general  de- 
signs and  particular  passions,  with  the  faults,  virtues,  and  crimes 
that  are  found  mingled  together  in  human  things.  It  teaches 
the  excellence  of  prudence,  courage,  and  great  thoughts  pro- 
foundly meditated,  constantly  pursued,  and  executed  with  mod- 
eration and  force.  It  shows  the  vanity  of  immoderate  preten- 
sions, the  power  of  wisdom  and  virtue,  the  impotence  of  folly  and 
crime.  Thucydides,  Polybius,  and  Tacitus  undertake  any  thing 
else  than  procuring  new  emotions  for  an  idle  curiosity  or  a  worn- 
out  imagination ;  they  doubtless  desire  to  interest  and  attract, 
but  more  to  instruct ;  they  are  the  avowed  masters  of  statesmen 
and  the  preceptors  of  mankind. 

The  sole  object  of  art  is  the  beautiful.  Art  abandons  itself  as 
soon  as  it  shuns  this.  It  is  often  constrained  to  make  conces- 
sions to  circumstances,  to  external  conditions  that  are  imposed 
upon  it;  but  it  must  always  retain  a  just  liberty.  Architecture 
and  the  art  of  gardening  are  the  least  free  of  arts ;  they  are 
subjected  to  unavoidable  obstacles ;  it  belongs  to  the  genius  of 
the  artist  to  govern  these  obstacles,  and  even  to  draw  from  them 
happy  effects,  as  the  poet  turns  the  slavery  of  metre  and  rhyme 
into  a  source  of  unexpected  beauties.  Extreme  liberty  may 
carry  art  to  a  caprice  which  degrades  it,  as  chains  too  heavy 
crush  it.  It  is  the  death  of  architecture  to  subject  it  to  conve- 

1  There  is  a  Provincial  that  for  vehemence  can  be  compared  only  to  the 
PMlipics,  and  its  fragment  on  the  infinite  has  the  grandeur  and  magnificence 
of  Bossuet.  See  our  work  on  the  Thoughts  of  Pascal,  4th  Series,  Literature, 
vol.  i. 

8 


1TO  LECTURE   NINTH. 

nience,  to  comfort.  Is  the  architect  obliged  to  subordinate  gen- 
eral effect  and  the  proportions  of  the  edifice  to  such  or  such  a 
particular  end  that  is  prescribed  to  him  ?  He  takes  refuge  in 
details,  in  pediments,  in  friezes,  in  all  the  parts  that  have  not 
utility  for  a  special  object,  and  in  them  he  becomes  a  true  artist. 
Sculpture  and  painting,  especially  music  and  poetry,  are  freer 
than  architecture  and  the  art  of  gardening.  One  can  also  shackle 
them,  but  they  disengage  themselves  more  easily. 

Similar  by  their  common  end,  all  the  arts  differ  by  the  partic- 
ular effects  which  they  produce,  and  by  the  processes  which 
they  employ.  They  gain  nothing  by  exchanging  their  means 
and  confounding  the  limits  that  separate  them.  I  bow  before 
the  authority  of  antiquity  ;  but,  perhaps,  through  habit  and  a 
remnant  of  prejudice,  I  have  some  difficulty  in  representing  to 
myself  with  pleasure  statues  composed  of  several  metals,  espe- 
cially painted  statues.1  Without  pretending  that  sculpture  has 
not  to  a  certain  point  its  color,  that  of  perfectly  pure  matter,  that 
especially  which  the  hand  of  time  impresses  upon  it,  in  spite  of 
all  the  seductions  of  a  contemporaneous4  artist  of  great  talent,  I 
have  little  taste,  I  confess,  for  that  artifice  that  is  forced  to  give 
to  marble  the  morbidezza  of  painting.  Sculpture  is  an  austere 
muse ;  it  has  its  graces,  but  they  are  those  of  no  other  art. 
Flesh-color  must  Remain  a  stranger  to  it :  there  would  nothing 
more  remain  to  communicate  to  it  but  the  movement  of  poetry 
and  the  indefiniteness  of  music  !  And  what  will  music  gain  by 
aiming  at  the  picturesque,  when  its  proper  domain  is  the  pa- 
thetic ?  Give  to  the  most  learned  symphonist  a  storm  to  render. 
Nothing  is  easier  to  imitate  than  the  whistling  of  the  winds  and 
the  noise  of  thunder.  But  by  what  combinations  of  harmony 
will  he  exhibit  to  the  eyes  the  glare  of  the  lightning  rending  all 
of  a  sudden  the  veil  of  the  night,  and  what  is  most  fearful  in  the 
tempest,  the  movement  of  the  waves  that  now  ascend  like  a 

1  See  the  Jupiter  Otympien  of  M.  Quatremere  de  Quincy. 
*  Allusion  to  the  Magddelne  of  Canova,  which  was  then  to  be  seen  in  the 
gallery  of  M.  de  Sominariva. 


THE   DIFFERENT    AKTS.  171 

mountain,  now  descend  and  seem  to  precipitate  themselves  into 
bottomless  abysses  ?  If  the  auditor  is  not  informed  of  the  sub- 
ject, he  will  never  suspect  it,  and  I  defy  him  to  distinguish  a 
tempest  from  a  battle.  In  spite  of  science  and  genius,  sounds 
cannot  paint  forms.  Music,  when  well  guided,  will  guard  itself 
from  contending  against  the  impossible  ;  it  will  not  undertake  to 
express  the  tumult  and  strife  of  the  waves  and  other  similar  phe- 
nomena ;  it  will  do  more :  with  sounds  it  will  fill  the  soul  with 
the  sentiments  that  succeed  each  other  in  us  during  the  different 
scenes  of  the  tempest.  Haydn  will  thus  become1  the  rival,  even 
the  vanquisher  of  the  painter,  because  it  has  been  given  to  music 
to  move  and  agitate  the  soul  more  profoundly  than  painting. 

Since  the  Laocoon  of  Lessing,  it  is  no  longer  permitted  to  re- 
peat, without  great  reserve,  the  famous  axiom, —  Ut  pictura 
poesis ;  or,  at  least,  it  is  very  certain  that  painting  cannot  do 
every  thing  that  poetry  can  do.  Everybody  admires  the  picture 
of  Rumor,  drawn  by  Virgil ;  but  let  a  painter  try  to  realize  this 
symbolic  figure ;  let  him  represent  to  us  a  huge  monster  with  a 
hundred  eyes,  a  hundred  mouths,  and  a  hundred  ears,  whose 
feet  touch  the  earth,  whose  head  is  lost  in  the  clouds,  and  such 
a  figure  will  become  very  ridiculous. 

So  the  arts  have  a  common  end,  and  entirely  different  means. 
Hence  the  general  rules  common  to  all,  and  particular  rules  for 
each.  I  have  neither  time  nor  space  to  enter  into  details  on  this 
point.  I  limit  myself  to  repeating,  that  the  great  law  which 
governs  all  others,  is  expression.  Every  work  of  art  that  does 
not  express  an  idea  signifies  nothing  ;  in  addressing  itself  to  such 
or  such  a  sense,  it  must  penetrate  to  the  mind,  to  the  soul,  and 
bear  thither  a  thought,  a  sentiment  capable  of  touching  or  ele- 
vating it.  From  this  fundamental  rule  all  the  others  are  derived ; 
for  example,  that  which  is  continually  and  justly  recommended, 
— composition.  To  this  is  particularly  applied  the  precept  of 
unity  and  variety.  But,  in  saying  this,  we  have  said  nothing  so 

1  See  the  Tempest  of  Haydn,  among  the  pianoforte  works  of  this  master. 


172  LECTURE  NINTH. 

long  as  we  have  not  determined  the  nature  of  the  unity  of  which 
we  would  speak.  True  unity,  is  unity  of  expression,  and  variety 
is  made  only  to  spread  over  the  entire  work  the  idea  or  the  sin- 
gle sentiment  that  it  should  express.  It  is  useless  to  remark, 
that  between  composition  thus  defined,  and  what  is  often  called 
composition,  as  the  symmetry  and  arrangement  of  parts  accord- 
ing to  artificial  rules,  there  is  an  abyss.  True  composition  is 
nothing  else  than  the  most  powerful  means  of  expression. 

Expression  not  only  furnishes  the  general  rules  of  art,  it  also 
gives  the  principle  that  allows  of  their  classification. 

In  fact,  every  classification  supposes  a  principle  that  serves  as 
a  common  measure. 

Such  a  principle  has  been  sought  in  pleasure,  and  the  first  of 
arts  has  seemed  that  which  gives  the  most  vivid  joys.  But  we 
have  proved  that  the  object  of  art  is  not  pleasure  : — the  more  or 
less  of  pleasure  that  an  art  procures  cannot,  then,  be  the  true 
measure  of  its  value. 

This  measure  is  nothing  else  than  expression.  Expression 
being  the  supreme  end,  the  art  that  most  nearly  approaches  it  is 
the  first  of  all. 

All  true  arts  are  expressive,  but  they  are  diversely  so.  Take 
music  ;  it  is  without  contradiction  the  most  penetrating,  the  pro- 
foundest,  the  most  intimate  art.  There  is  physically  and  morally 
between  a  sound  and  the  soul  a  marvellous  relation.  It  seems 
as  though  the  soul  were  an  echo  in  which  the  sound  takes  a  new 
power.  Extraordinary  things  are  recounted  of  the  ancient  mu- 
sic. And  it  must  not  be  believed  that  the  greatness  of  effect 
supposes  here  very  complicated  means.  No,  the  less  noise  mu- 
sic makes,  the  more  it  touches.  Give  some  notes  to  Pergolese, 
give  him  especially  some  pure  and  sweet  voices,  and  he  returns 
a  celestial  charm,  bears  you  away  into  infinite  spaces,  plunges 
you  into  ineffable  reveries.  The  peculiar  power  of  music  is  to 
open  to  the  imagination  a  limitless  career,  to  lend  itself  with 
astonishing  facility  to  all  the  moods  of  each  one,  to  arouse  or 
calm,  with  the  sounds  of  the  simplest  melody,  our  accustomed 


THE  DIFFERENT   ARTS.  173 

sentiments,  our  favorite  affections.  In  this  respect  music  is  an 
art  without  a  rival : — however,  it  is  not  the  first  of  arts. 

Music  pays  for  the  immense  power  that  has  been  given  it ;  it 
awakens  more  than  any  other  art  the  sentiment  of  the  infinite, 
because  it  is  vague,  obscure,  indeterminate  in  its  effects.  It  is 
just  the  opposite  art  to  sculpture,  which  bears  less  towards  the 
infinite,  because  every  thing  in  it  is  fixed  with  the  last  degree  of 
precision.  Such  is  the  force  and  at  the  same  time  the  feebleness 
of  music,  that  it  expresses  every  thing  and  expresses  nothing  in 
particular.  Sculpture,  on  the  contrary,  scarcely  gives  rise  to 
any  reverie,  for  it  clearly  represents  such  a  thing  and  not  such 
another.  Music  does  not  paint,  it  touches ;  it  puts  in  motion 
imagination,  not  the  imagination  that  reproduces  images,  but 
that  which  makes  the  heart  beat,  for  it  is  absurd  to  limit  imagi- 
nation to  the  domain  of  images.1  The  heart,  once  touched, 
moves  all  the  rest  of  our  being ;  thus  music,  indirectly,  and  to  a 
certain  point,  can  recall  images  and  ideas ;  but  its  direct  and 
natural  power  is  neither  on  the  representative  imagination  nor 
intelligence,  it  is  on  the  heart,  and  that  is  an  advantage  suffi- 
ciently beautiful. 

The  domain  of  music  is  sentiment,  but  even  there  its  power  is 
more  profound  than  extensive,  and  if  it  expresses  certain  senti- 
ments with  an  incomparable  force,  it  expresses  but  a  very  small 
number  of  them.  By  way  of  association,  it  can  awaken  them 
all,  but  directly  it  produces  very  few  of  them,  and  the  simplest 
and  the  most  elementary,  too, — sadness  and  joy  with  their  thou- 
sand shades.  Ask  music  to  express  magnanimity,  virtuous  reso- 
lution, and  other  sentiments  of  this  kind,  and  it  will  be  just  as 
incapable  of  doing  it,  as  of  painting  a  lake  or  a  mountain.  It 
goes  about  it  as  it  can ;  it  employs  the  slow,  the  rapid,  the  loud, 
the  soft,  etc.,  but  imagination  has  to  do  the  rest,  and  imagination 
does  only  what  it  pleases.  The  same  measure  reminds  one  of  a 
mountain,  another  of  the  ocean ;  the  warrior  finds  in  it  heroic 

1  See  lecture  6. 


174  LECTURE  NINTH. 

inspirations,  the  recluse  religious  inspirations.  Doubtless,  words 
determine  musical  expression,  but  the  merit  then  is  in  the  word, 
not  in  the  music ;  and  sometimes  the  word  stamps  the  music 
'with  a  precision  that  destroys  it,  and  deprives  it  of  its  proper 
effects — vagueness,  obscurity,  monotony,  but  also  fulness  and 
profundity,  I  was  about  to  say  infinitude.  I  do  not  in  the  least 
admit  that  famous  definition  of  song : — a  noted  declamation.  A 
simple  declamation  rightly  accented  is  certainly  preferable  to 
stunning  accompaniments  ;  but  to  music  must  be  left  its  charac- 
ter, and  its  defects  and  advantages  must  not  be  taken  away  from 
it.  Especially  it  must  not  be  turned  aside  from  its  object,  and 
there  must  not  be  demanded  from  it  what  it  could  not  give.  It 
is  not  made  to  express  complicated  and  factitious  sentiment,  nor 
terrestrial  and  vulgar  sentiments.  Its  peculiar  charm  is  to  ele- 
vate the  soul  towards  the  infinite.  It  is  therefore  naturally  al- 
lied to  religion,  especially  to  that  religion  of  the  infinite,  which  is 
at  the  same  time  the  religion  of  the  heart ;  it  excels  in  transport- 
ing to  the  feet  of  eternal  mercy  the  soul  trembling  on  the  wings 
of  repentance,  hope,  and  love.  Happy  are  those,  who,  at  Rome, 
in  the  Vatican,1  during  the  solemnities  of  the  Catholic  worship, 

1  I  have  not  myself  had  the  good  fortune  to  hear  the  religious  music  of 
the  Vatican.  Therefore,  I  shall  let  a  competent  judge,  M.  Quatremere  de 
Quincy,  speak,  Considerations  Morales  sur  les  Destination  des  Outrages  de 
PArt,  Paris,  1815,  p.  98  :  "  Let  one  call  to  mind  those  chants  so  simple  and 
so  touching,  that  terminate  at  Eome  the  funeral  solemnities  of  those  three 
days  which  the  Church  particularly  devotes  to  the  expression  of  its  grief,  in 
the  last  week  of  Lent.  In  that  nave  where  the  genius  of  Michael  Angelo 
has  embraced  the  duration  of  ages,  from  the  wonders  of  creation  to  the  last 
judgment  that  must  destroy  its  works,  are  celebrated,  in  the  presence  of  the 
Koman  pontiff,  those  nocturnal  ceremonies  whose  rites,  symbols,  and  plain- 
tive liturgies  seem  to  be  so  many  figures  of  the  mystery  of  grief  to  which 
they  are  consecrated.  The  light  decreasing  by  degrees,  at  the  termination 
of  each  psalm,  you  would  say  that  a  funeral  veil  is  extended  little  by  little 
over  those  religious  vaults.  Soon  the  doubtful  light  of  the  last  lamp  allows 
you  to  perceive  nothing  but  Christ  in  the  distance,  in  the  midst  of  clouds, 
pronouncing  his  judgments,  and  some  angel  executors  of  his  behests. 
Then,  at  the  bottom  of  a  tribune  interdicted  to  the  regard  of  the  profane,  is 
heard  the  psalm  of  the  penitent  king,  to  which  three  of  the  greatest  masters 
of  the  art  have  added  the  modulations  of  a  simple  and  pathetic  chant.  No 
instrument  is  mingled  with  those  accents.  Simple  harmonies  of  voice  exe- 


THE   DIFFERENT  ARTS.  175 

have  heard  the  melodies  of  Leo,  Durante,  and  Pergolese,  on  the 
old  consecrated  text !  They  have  entered  heaven  for  a  moment, 
and  their  souls  have  been  able  to  ascend  thither  without  distinc- 
tion of  rank,  country,  even  belief,  by  those  invisible  and  myste- 
rious steps,  composed,  thus  to  speak,  of  all  the  simple,  natural, 
universal  sentiments,  that  everywhere  on  earth  draw  from  the 
bosom  of  the  human  creature  a  sigh  towards  another  world ! 

Between  sculpture  and  music,  those  two  opposite  extremes,  is 
painting,  nearly  as  precise  as  the  one,  nearly  as  touching  as  the 
other.  Like  sculpture,  it  marks  the  visible  forms  of  objects,  but 
adds  to  them  life ;  like  music,  it  expresses  the  profoundest  senti- 
ments of  the  soul,  and  expresses  them  all.  Tell  me  what  senti- 
ment does  not  come  within  the  province  of  the  painter  ?  He 
has  entire  nature  at  his  disposal,  the  physical  world,  and  the 
moral  world,  a  churchyard,  a  landscape,  a  sunset,  the  ocean,  the 
great  scenes  of  civil  and  religious  life,  all  the  beings  of  creation, 
above  all,  the  figure  of  man,  and  its  expression,  that  living  mir- 
ror of  what  passes  in  the  soul.  More  pathetic  than  sculpture, 
clearer  than  music,  painting  is  elevated,  in  my  opinion,  above 
both,  because  it  expresses  beauty  more  under  all  its  forms, 
and  the  human  soul  in  all  the  richness  and  variety  of  its  senti- 
ments. 

But  the  art  par  excellence,  that  which  surpasses  all  others,  be- 
cause it  is  incomparably  the  most  expressive,  is  poetry. 

Speech  is  the  instrument  of  poetry  ;  poetry  fashions  it  to  its 
use,  and  idealizes  it,  in  order  to  make  it  express  ideal  beauty. 


cute  that  music ;  but  these  voices  sflem  to  be  those  of  angels,  and  their  effect 
penetrates  the  depths  of  the  soul." 

We  have  cited  this  beautiful  passage — and  we  could  have  cited  many 
others,  even  superior  to  it — of  a  man  now  forgotten,  and  almost  always  mis- 
understood, but  whom  posterity  will  put  in  his  place.  Let  us  indicate,  at 
least,  the  last  pages  of  the  same  production,  on  the  necessity  of  leaving  the 
works  of  art  in  the  place  for  which  they  were  made,  for  example,  the  por- 
trait of  Mile,  de  Valliere  in  the  Madeleine  aux  Carmelites,  instead  of  trans- 
ferring it  to,  and  exposing  it  in  the  apartments  of  Versailles,  "  the  only 
place  in  the  world,"  eloquently  says  M.  Quatremere,  "  which  never  should 
have  seen  it." 


176  LECTURE   NINTH. 

Poetry  gives  to  it  the  charm  and  power  of  measure  ;  it  makes 
of  it  something  intermediary  between  the  ordinary  voice  and 
music,  something  at  once  material  and  immaterial,  finite,  clear, 
and  precise,  like  contours  and  forms  the  most  definite,  living 
and  animated  like  color,  pathetic  and  infinite  like  sound.  A 
word  in  itself,  especially  a  word  chosen  and  transfigured  by 
poetry,  is  the  most  energetic  and  universal  symbol.  Armed 
with  this  talisman,  poetry  reflects  all  the  images  of  the  sensible 
world,  like  sculpture  and  painting ;  it  reflects  sentiment  like 
painting  and  music,  with  all  its  varieties,  which  music  does  not 
attain,  and  in  their  rapid  succession  that  painting  cannot  follow, 
as  precise  and  immobile  as  sculpture  ;  and  it  not  only  expresses 
all  that,  it  expresses  what  is  inaccessible  to  every  other  art,  I 
mean  thought,  entirely  distinct  from  the  senses  and  even  from 
sentiment, — thought  that  has  no  forms,-' — thought  that  has  no 
color,  that  lets  no  sound  escape,  that  does  not  manifest  itself  in 
any  way, — thought  in  its  highest  flight,  in  its  most  refined 
abstraction. 

Think  of  it.  What  a  world  of  images,  of  sentiments,  of 
thoughts  at  once  distinct  and  confused,  are  excited  within  us  by 
this  one  word — country !  and  by  this  other  word,  brief  and  im- 
mense,— God  !  What  is  more  clear  and  altogether  more  pro- 
found and  vast ! 

Tell  the  architect,  the  sculptor,  the  painter,  even  the  musician, 
to  call  forth  also  by  a  single  stroke  all  the  powers  of  nature  and 
the  soul !  They  cannot,  and  by  that  they  acknowledge  the  supe- 
riority of  speech  and  poetry. 

They  proclaim  it  themselves,  for  they  take  poetry  for  their  own 
measure ;  they  esteem  their  own  works,  and  demand  that  they 
should  be  esteemed,  in  proportion  as  they  approach  the  poetic 
ideal.  And  the  human  race  does  as  artists  do  :  a  beautiful  pic- 
ture, a  noble  melody,  a  living  and  expressive  statue,  gives  rise  to 
the  exclamation — How  poetical !  This  is  not  an  arbitrary  com- 
parison ;  it  is  a  natural  judgment  which  makes  poetry  the  type 
of  the  perfection  of  all  the  arts, — the.  art  par  excellence,  which 


THE  DIFFERENT   ARTS.  177 

comprises   all   others,  to   which   they  aspire,  which   none  can 
reach. 

When  the  other  arts  would  imitate  the  works  of  poetry,  they 
usually  err,  losing  their  own  genius,  without  robbing  poetry  of  its 
genius.  But  poetry  constructs  according  to  its  own  taste  palaces 
and  temples,  like  architecture ;  it  makes  them  simple  or  magnifi- 
cent ;  all  orders,  as  well  as  all  systems,  obey  it ;  the  different  ages 
of  art  are  the  same  to  it ;  it  reproduces,  if  it  pleases,  the  classic  or 
the  Gothic,  the  beautiful  or  the  sublime,  the  measured  or  the  in- 
finite. Lessing  has  been  able,  with  the  exactest  justice,  to  com- 
pare Homer  to  the  most  perfect  sculptor ;  with  such  precision  are 
the  forms  which  that  marvellous  chisel  gives  to  all  beings  deter- 
mined"! And  what  a  painter,  too,  is  Homer !  and,  of  a  different 
kind,  Dante !  Music  alone  has  something  more  penetrating  than 
poetry,  but  it  is  vague,  limited,  and  fugitive.  Besides  its  clearness, 
its  variety,  its  durability,  poetry  has  also  the  most  pathetic  accents. 
Call  to  mind  Jhe  words  that  Priam  utters  at  the  feet  of  Achilles 
while  asking  him  for  the  dead  body  of  his  son,  more  than  one  verse 
of  Virgil,  entire  scenes  of  the  Cid  and  the  Polyeucte,  the  prayer  of 
Esther  kneeling  before  the  Lord,  the  choruses  of  Esther  and  Atha- 
lie.  In  the  celebrated  song  of  Pergolese,  Stabat  Mater  Dolorosa, 
we  may  ask  which  moves  most,  the  music  or  the  words.  The  Dies 
tree,  Dies  ilia,  recited  only,  produces  the  most  terrible  effect.  In 
those  fearful  words,  every  blow  tells,  so  to  speak ;  each  word  con- 
tains a  distinct  sentiment,  an  idea  at  once  profound  and  determi- 
nate. The  intellect  advances  at  each  step,  and  the  heart  rushes 
on  in  its  turn.  Human  speech  idealized  by  poetry  has  the  depth 
and  brilliancy  of  musical  notes ;  it  is  luminous  as  well  as  pa- 
thetic ;  it  speaks  to  the  mind  as  well  as  to  the  heart ;  it  is  in  that 
inimitable,  unique,  and  embraces  all  extremes  and  all  contraries 
in  a  harmony  that  redoubles  their  reciprocal  effect,  in  which,  by 
turns,  appear  and  are  developed,  all  images,  all  sentiments,  all 
ideas,  all  the  human  faculties,  all  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  soul, 
all  the  forms  of  things,  all  real  and  all  intelligible  worlds ! 

8* 


LECTUEE  X. 

FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Expression  not  only  serves  to  appreciate  the  different  arts,  but  the  different 
schools  of  art.  Example : — French  art  in  the  seventeenth  century.  French 
poetry: — Corneille.  Racine.  Moliere.  La  Fontaine.  Boileau. — Paint- 
ing:—  Lesueur.  Poussin.  Le  Lorrain.  Champagne. — Engraving. — 
Sculpture  : — Sarrazin.  The  Anguiers.  Girardon.  Pujet. — Le  Notre. — 
Architecture. 

WE  believe  that  we  have  firmly  established  that  all  kinds  of 
beauty,  although  most  dissimilar  in  appearance,  may,  when  sub- 
jected to  a  serious  examination,  be  reduced  to  spiritual  and  moral 
beauty ;  that  expression,  therefore,  is  at  once  the  true  object  and 
the  first  law  of  art ;  that  all  arts  are  such  only  so  far  as  they  ex- 
press the  idea  concealed  under  the  form,  and  are  addressed  to  the 
soul  through  the  senses  ;  finally,  that  in  expression  the  different 
arts  find  the  true  measure  of  their  relative  value,  and  the  most 
expressive  art  must  be  placed  in  the  first  rank. 

If  expression  judges  the  different  arts,  does  it  not  naturally  fol- 
low, that  by  the  same  title  it  can  also  judge  the  different  schools 
which,  in  each  art,  dispute  with  each  other  the  empire  of  taste  ? 

There  is  not  one  of  these  schools  that  does  not  represent  in  its 
own  way  some  side  of  the  beautiful,  and  we  are  disposed  to  em- 
brace all  in  an  impartial  and  kindly  study.  We  are  eclectics  in 
the  arts  as  well  as  in  metaphysics.  But,  as  in  metaphysics,  the 
knowledge  of  all  systems,  and  the  portion  of  truth  that  is  in  each, 
enlightens  without  enfeebling  our  convictions  ;  so,  in  the  history 
of  arts,  while  holding  the  opinion  that  no  school  must  be  dis- 
dained, that  even  in  China  some  shade  of  beauty  can  be  found, 
our  eclecticism  does  not  make  us  waver  in  regard  to  the  sentiment 
of  true  beauty  and  the  supreme  rule  of  art.  What  we  demand 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    179 

of  the  different  schools,  without  distinction  of  time  or  place,  what 
we  see  in  the  south  as  well  as  in  the  north,  at  Florence,  Rome, 
Venice,  and  Seville,  as  well  as  at  Antwerp,  Amsterdam,  and 
Paris, — wherever  there  are  men,  is  something  human,  is  the  ex- 
pression of  a  sentiment  or  an  idea. 

A  criticism  that  should  be  founded  on  the  principle  of  expres- 
sion, would  somewhat  derange,  it  must  be  confessed,  received 
judgments,  and  would  carry  some  disorder  into  the  hierarchy  of 
the  renowned.  We  do  not  undertake  such  a  revolution ;  we 
only  propose  to  confirm,  or  at  least  elucidate  our  principle  by  an 
example,  and  by  an  example  that  is  at  our  hand. 

There  is  in  the  world  a  school  formerly  illustrious,  now  very 
lightly  treated  : — this  school  is  the  French  school  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  We  would  replace  it  in  honor,  by  recalling 
attention  to  the  qualities  that  make  its  glory. 

We  have  worked  with  constancy  to  reinstate  among  us  the 
philosophy  of  Descartes,  unworthily  sacrificed  to  the  philosophy 
of  Locke,  because  with  its  defects  it  possesses  in  our  view  the 
incomparable  merit  of  subordinating  the  senses  to  the  mind,  of 
elevating  and  ennobling  man.  So  we  profess  a  serious  and  re- 
flective admiration  for  our  national  art  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
because,  without  disguising  what  is  wanting  to  it,  we  find  in  it 
what  we  prefer  to  every  thing  else,  grandeur  united  to  good  sense 
and  reason,  simplicity  and  force,  genius  of  composition,  especially 
that  of  expression. 

France,  careless  of  her  glory,  does  not  appear  to  have  the  least 
notion  that  she  reckons  in  her  annals  perhaps  the  greatest  century 
of  humanity,  that  which  embraces  the  greatest  number  of  extra- 
ordinary men  of  every  kind.  When,  I  pray  you,  have  politicians 
like  Henry  IV.,  Richelieu,  Mazarin,  Colbert,  Louis  XIV.  been  seen 
giving  each  other  the  hand  ?  I  do  not  pretend  that  each  of  them 
has  no  rival,  even  superiors.  Alexander,  Caesar,  Charlemagne, 
perhaps  excel  them.  But  Alexander  has  but  a  single  contempo- 
rary that  can  be  compared  with  him,  his  father  Philip ;  Caesar 
cannot  even  have  suspected  that  Octavius  would  one  day  be 


180  LECTUBE   TENTH. 

worthy  of  him ;  Charlemagne  is  a  colossus  in  a  desert ;  whilst 
among  us  these  five  men  succeed  each  other  without  an  interval, 
press  upon  each  other,  and  have,  thus  to  speak,  a  single  soul. 
And  by  what  officers  were  they  served !  Is  Conde  really  inferior 
to  Alexander,  Hannibal,  and  Caesar;  for  among  his  predecessors 
we  must  not  look  for  other  rivals  ?  Who  among  them  surpasses 
him  in  the  extent  and  justness  of  his  conceptions,  in  quickness  of 
sight,  in  rapidity  of  manoeuvres,  in  the  union  of  impetuosity  and 
firmness,  in  the  double  glory  of  taker  of  cities  and  gainer  of  bat- 
tles ?  Add  that  he  dealt  with  generals  like  Merci  and  William, 
that  he  had  under  him  Turenne  and  Luxemburg,  without  speak- 
ing of  so  many  other  soldiers  who  were  reared  in  that  admirable 
school,  and  at  the  hour  of  reverse  still  sufficed  to  save  France. 

What  other  time,  at  least  among  the  moderns,  has  seen  flour- 
ishing together  so  many  poets  of  the  first  order  ?  We  have,  it  is 
true,  neither  Homer,  nor  Dante,  nor  Milton,  nor  even  Tasso. 
The  epic,  with  its  primitive  simplicity,  is  interdicted  us.  But  in 
the  drama  we  scarcely  have  equals.  It  is  because  dramatic  poet- 
ry is  the  poetry  that  is  adapted  to  us,  moral  poetry  par  excellence, 
which  represents  man  with  his  different  passions  armed  against 
each  other,  the  violent  contentions  between  virtue  and  crime,  the 
freaks  of  fortune,  the  lessons  of  providence,  and  in  a  narrow 
compass,  too,  in  which  the  events  press  upon  each  other  with- 
out confusion,  in  which  the  action  rapidly  progresses  towards  the 
crisis  that  must  reveal  what  is  most  intimate  to  the  heart  of  the 
personages. 

Let  us  dare  to  say  what  we  think,  that,  in  our  opinion,  ^Eschy- 
lus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides,  together,  do  not  equal  Corneille ; 
for  none  of  them  has  known  and  expressed  like  him  what  is  of 
all  things  most  truly  touching,  a  great  soul  at  war  with  itself, 
between  a  generous  passion  and  duty.  Corneille  is  the  creator 
of  a  new  pathetic  unknown  to  antiquity  and  to  all  the  moderns 
before  him.  He  disdains  to  address  common  and  subaltern  pas- 
sions ;  he  does  not  seek  to  rouse  terror  and  pity,  as  demands 
Aristotle,  who  limits  himself  to  erecting  into  maxims  the  practice 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    181 

of  the  Greeks.  Corneille  seems  to  have  read  Plato,  and  followed 
his  precepts : — he  addresses  a  most  elevated  part  of  human  nature, 
the  noblest  passion,  the  one  nearest  virtue, — admiration ;  and 
from  admiration  carried  to  its  culmination  he  draws  the  most 
powerful  effects.  Shakspeare,  we  admit,  is  superior  to  Corneille 
in  extent  and  richness  of  dramatic  genius.  Entire  human  nature 
seems  at  his  disposal,  and  he  reproduces  the  different  scenes  of 
life  in  their  beauty  and  deformity,  in  their  grandeur  and  baseness. 
He  excels  in  painting  the  terrible  or  the  gentle  passions.  Othello 
is  jealousy,  Lady  Macbeth  is  ambition,  as  Juliet  and  Desdemona 
are  the  immortal  names  of  youthful  and  unfortunate  love.  But 
if  Corneille  has  less  imagination,  he  has  more  soul.  Less  varied, 
he  is  more  profound.  If  he  does  not  put  upon  the  stage  so  many 
different  characters,  those  that  he  does  put  on  it  are  the  greatest 
that  can  be  offered  to  humanity.  The  scenes  that  he  gives  are 
less  heart-rending,  but  at  once  more  delicate  and  more  sublime. 
What  is  the  melancholy  of  Hamlet,  the  grief  of  King  Lear,  even 
the  disdainful  intrepidity  of  Caesar,  in  comparison  with  the  mag- 
nanimity of  Augustus  striving  to  be  master  of  himself  as  well  as 
the  universe,  in  comparison  with  Chimene  sacrificing  love  to 
honor,  especially  in  comparison  with  Pauline,  not  suffering  even 
at  the  bottom  of  her  heart  an  involuntary  sigh  for  the  one  that 
she  must  not  love  ?  Corneille  always  confines  himself  to  the 
highest  regions.  He  is  by  turns  Roman  and  Christian.  He  is 
the  interpreter  of  heroes,  the  chanter  of  virtue,  the  poet  of 
warriors  and  politicians.1  And  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
Shakspeare  is  almost  alone  in  his  times,  whilst  after  Corneille 
comes  Racine,  who  would  suffice  for  the  poetical  glory  of  a  nation. 
Racine  assuredly  cannot  be  compared  with  Corneille  for  dramatic 
genius ;  he  is  more  the  man  of  letters ;  he  has  not  the  tragic  soul ; 
he  neither  loves  nor  understands  politics  and  war.  When  he 
imitates  Corneille,  for  example,  in  Alexander,  and  even  in  Mith- 


1  One  is  reminded  of  the  expression  of  the  great  Conde  :     "  Where  then 
has  Corneille  learned  politics  and  war !" 


182  LECTUKE    TENTH. 

ridates,*he  imitates  him  badly  enough.  The  scene,  so  vaunted, 
of  Mithridates  exposing  his  plan  of  campaign  to  his  sons  is  a 
morsel  of  the  finest  rhetoric,  which  cannot  be  compared  with  the 
political  and  military  scenes  of  Cinna  and  Sertorius,  especially 
with  that  first  scene  of  the  Death  of  Pompey,  in  which  you  wit- 
ness a  counsel  as  true,  as  grand,  as  profound  as  ever  could  have 
been  one  of  the  counsels  of  Richelieu  or  Mazarin.  Racine  was 
not  born  to  paint  heroes,  but  he  paints  admirably  man  with  his 
natural  passions,  and  the  most  natural  as  well  as  the  most  touch- 
ing of  all,  love.  So  he  particularly  excels  in  feminine  characters. 
For  men  he  has  need  of  being  sustained  by  Tacitus  or  holy  Scrip- 
ture.1 With  woman  he  is  at  his  ease,  and  he  makes  them  think 
and  speak  with  perfect  truth,  set  off  by  exquiste  art.  Demand  of 
him  neithejr  Emilie,  Cornelie,  nor  Pauline ;  but  listen  to  Andro- 
maque,  Monime,  Berenice,  and  Phedre !  There,  even  in  imita- 
ting, he  is  original,  and  leaves  the  ancients  very  far  behind  him. 
Who  has  taught  him  that  charming  delivery,  those  graceful 
troubles,  that  purity  even  in  feebleness,  that  melancholy,  some- 
times even  that  depth,  with  that  marvellous  language  which 
seems  the  natural  accent  of  woman's  heart  ?  It  is  continually 
repeated  that  Racine  wrote  better  than  Corneille : — say  only  that 
the  two  wrote  very  differently,  and  like  men  in  very  different  epochs. 
One  has  two  sovereign  qualities,  which  belong  to  his  own  nature 


1  It  would  be  a  curious  and  useful  study,  to  compare  with  the  original  all 
the  passages  of  Britannicus  imitated  from  Tacitus ;  in  them  Eacine  would 
almost  always  be  found  below  his  model.  I  will  give  a  single  example.  In 
the  account  of  the  death  of  Britannicus,  Eacine  thus  expresses  the  different 
effects  of  the  crime  on  the  spectators  : 

Juez  combien  ce  coup  frappe  tous  les  esprite ; 
La  moitie  s'epouvante  et  sort  avec  des  cris ; 
Mais  ceux  qui  de  la  cour  ont  un  plus  long  usage 
Sur  les  yeux  de  Cesar  composent  leur  visage. 

Certainly  the  style  is  excellent ;  but  it  pales  and  seems  nothing  more  than 
a  very  feeble  sketch  in  comparison  with  the  rapid  and  sombre  pencil-strokes 
of  the  great  Eoman  painter  :  "  Trepidatur  a  circumsedentibus,  diffugiunt 
imprudentes ;  at,  quibus  altior  intellectus,  resistunt  deflxi  et  Neronem  in- 
tuentes." 


FRENCH  ART  m  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    183 

and  his  times,  a  naivete  and  grandeur,  the  other  is  not  naive,  but 
he  has  too  much  taste  not  to  be  always  simple,  and  he  supplies 
the  place  of  grandeur,  forever  lost,  with  consummate  elegance. 
Corneille  speaks  the  language  of  statesmen,  soldiers,  theologians, 
philosophers,  and  clever  women ;  of  Richelieu,  Rohan,  Saint-Cyran, 
Descartes,  and  Pascal ;  of  mother  Angelique  Arnaud  and  mother 
Madeleine  de  Saint-Joseph ;  the  language  which  Moliere  still 
spoke,  which  Bossuet  preserved  to  his  last  breath.  Racine  speaks 
that  of  Louis  XIV.  and  the  women  who  were  the  ornament  of 
his  court.  I  suppose  that  thus  spoke  Madame,  the  amiable, 
sprightly,  and  unfortunate  Henriette ;  thus  wrote  the  author  of 
the  Princesse  de  Cleves  and  the  author  of  TeUmaque.  Or,  rather, 
this  language  is  that  of  Racine  himself,  of  that  feeble  and  tender 
soul,  which  passed  quickly  from  love  to  devotion,  which  uttered 
its  complaints  in  lyric  poetry,  which  was  wholly  poured  out  in  the 
choruses  of  Esther  and  Athalie,  and  in  the  Cantiques  Spirituels; 
that  soul,  so  easy  to  be  moved,  that  a  religious  ceremony  or  a 
representation  of  Esther  at  Saint-Cyr  touched  to  tears,  that  pitied 
the  misfortunes  of  the  people,  that  found  in  its  pity  and  its  char- 
ity the  courage  to  speak  one  day  the  truth  to  Louis  XIV.,  and 
was  extinguished  by  the  first  breath  of  disgrace. 

Moliere  is,  in  comparison  with  Aristophanes,  what  Corneille  is, 
in  comparison  with  Shakspeare.  The  author  of  Plutus,  the 
Wasps,  and  the  Clouds,  has  doubtless  an  imagination,  an  explo- 
sive buffoonery,  a  creative  power,  above  all  comparison.  Moliere 
has  not  as  great  poetical  conceptions  :  he  has  more,  perhaps  ;  he 
has  characters.  His  coloring  is  less  brilliant,  his  graver  is  more 
penetrating.  He  has  engraved  in  the  memory  of  men  a  certain 
number  of  irregularities  and  vices  which  will  ever  be  called 
VAvare  (the  Miser),  le  Malade  Imaginaire  (the  Hypochondriac), 
les  Femmes  Savantes  (the  Learned  Women),  le  Tartufe  (the 
Hypocrite),  and  Don  Juan,  not  to  speak  of  the  Misanthrope,  a 
piece  apart,  touching  as  pleasant,  which  is  not  addressed  to  the 
crowd,  and  cannot  be  popular,  because  it  expresses  a  ridicule  rare 
enough,  excess  in  the  passion  of  truth  and  honor. 


184  LECTURE   TENTH. 

Of  all  fabulists,  ancient  and  modern,  does  any  one,  even  the 
ingenious,  the  pure,  the  elegant  Phaedrus,  approach  our  La  Fon- 
taine? He  composes  his  personages,  and  puts  them  in  action 
with  the  skill  of  Moliere ;  he  knows  how  to  take  on  occasion  the 
tone  of  Horace,  and  mingle  an  ode  with  a  fable ;  he  is  at  once 
the  most  naive,  and  the  most  refined  of  writers,  and  his  art  dis- 
appears in  its  very  perfection.  We  do  not  speak  of  the  tales, 
first,  because  we  condemn  the  kind,  then,  because  La  Fontaine 
displays  in  them  qualities  more  Italian  than  French,  a  narrative 
full  of  nature,  malice,  and  grace,  but  without  any  of  those  pro- 
found, tender,  melancholy  traits,  that  place  among  the  greatest 
poets  of  all  time  the  author  of  the  Two  Pigeons  (Deux  Pigeons), 
the  Old  Man  (Vieillard),  and  the  Three  Young  Persons 
(Gens}. 

We  do  not  hesitate  to  put  Boileau  among  these  great  men. 
He  comes  after  them,  it  is  true,  but  he  belongs  to  their  company : 
he  comprehends  them,  loves  them,  sustains  them.  It  was  he, 
who,  in  1663,  after  the  School  of  Women  (VEcole  des  Femmes) 
and  long  before  the  Hypocrite  (le  Tartufe),  and  the  Misanthrope, 
proclaimed  Moliere  the  master  in  the  art  of  verse.  It  was  he 
who,  in  1677,  after  the  failure  of  Phedre,  defended  the  van- 
quisher of  Euripides  against  the  successes  of  Pradon.  It  was 
he  who,  in  advance  of  posterity,  first  put  in  light  what  is  new 
and  entirely  original  in  the  plays  of  Corneille.1  He  saved  the 
pension  of  the  old  tragedian  by  offering  the  sacrifice  of  his  own. 
Louis  XIV.  asking  him  what  writer  most  honored  his  reign,  Boi- 
leau answered,  that  it  was  Moliere ;  and  when  the  great  king  in 
his  decline  persecuted  Port-Royal,  and  wished  to  lay  hands  on 
Arnaud,  he  encountered  a  man  of  letters,  who  said  to  the  face  of 
the  imperious  monarh, — "  Your  Majesty  in  vain  seeks  M.  Arnaud, 
you  are  too  fortunate  to  find  him."  Boileau  is  somewhat  wanting 
in  imagination  and  invention ;  but  he  is  great  in  the  energetic 
sentiment  of  truth  and  justice ;  he  carries  to  the  extent  of  passion 

1  See  the  letter  to  Perrault. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    185 

taste  for  the  beautiful  and  the  honest ;  he  is  a  poet  by  force  of 
soul  and  good  sense.  More  than  once  his  heart  dictated  to  him 
the  most  pathetic  verses : 

"  In  vain  against  the  Cid  a  minister  is  leagued,1 
All  Paris  for  Chimene  has  the  eyes  of  Kodrique,"  etc. 


"  After  a  little  spot  of  earth,  obtained  by  prayer, 
Forever  in  the  tomb  had  inclosed  Moliere,"  etc. 

And  this  epitaph  of  Arnaud,  so  simple  and  so  grand  :* 

"At  the  feet  of  this  altar  of  structure  gross, 
Lies  without  pomp,  inclosed  in  a  coffin  vile, 
The  most  learned  mortal  that  ever  wrote ; 
Arnaud,  who  in  grace  instructed  by  Jesus  Christ, 
Combating  for  the  Church,  has,  in  the  Church  itself, 
Suffered  more  than  one  outrage  and  more  than  one  anathema,"  etc. 

"  Wandering,  poor,  banished,  proscribed,  persecuted ; 
And  even  by  his  death  their  ill-extinguished  rage 
Had  never  left  his  ashes  in  repose, 
If  God  himself  here  by  his  holy  flock 
From  these  devouring  wolves  had  not  concealed  hia  bones."  • 

These  are,  I  think,  poets  sufficiently  great,  and  we  have  more 
of  them  still :  I  mean  those  charming  or  sublime  minds  who 

1  En  vain  contre  le  Cid  ministre  se  ligue, 
Tout  Paris  pour  Chimene  a  les  yeux  de  Eodrique,  etc. 


Apres  qu'un  peu  de  terre,  obtenu  par  priere, 

Pour  jamais  dans  la  tombe  eut  enferme"  Moliere,  etc. 

*  Aux  pieds  de  cet  autel  de  structure  grossiere, 
Git  sans  pompe,  enferme  dans  une  vile  biere, 
Le  plus  savant  mortel  qui  jamais  ait  ecrit; 
Arnaud,  qui  sur  la  grdce  instruit  par  Jesus-Christ, 
Combattant  pour  1'Eglise,  a,  dans  1'Eglise  meme, 
Souffert  plus  d'un  outrage  et  plus  d'un  anatheme,  etc. 

Errant,  pauvre,  banni,  proscrit,  persecute" ; 
Et  meme  par  sa  mort  leur  fureur  mal  eteinte 
N'aurait  jamais  laisse  ses  cendres  en  repos, 
Si  Dieu  lui-me'me  ici  de  son  ouaille  sainte 
A  ces  loups  de vorants  n'avait  cach6  les  oa. 
8  These  verses  did  not  appear  till  after  the  death  of  Boileau,  and  they  are 


186  LECTURE  TENTH. 

have  elevated  prose  to  poetry.  Greece  alone,  in  her  most  beauti- 
ful days,  offers,  perhaps,  such  a  variety  of  admirable  prose  writers. 
Who  can  enumerate  them  ?  At  first,  Rabelais  and  Montaigne ; 
later,  Descartes,  Pascal,  and  Malebranche ;  La  Rochefoucauld  and 
La  Bruyere ;  Retz  and  Saint-Simon ;  Bourdaloue,  Flechier, 
Fenelon,  and  Bossuet ;  add  to  these  so  many  eminent  women,  at 
their  head  Madame  de  Sevigne ;  while  Montesquieu,  Voltaire, 
Rousseau,  and  Buffon  are  still  to  come.1 

By  what  strange  diversity  could  a  country,  in  which  the  mental 


not  well  known.  Jean-Baptiste  Eousseau,  in  a  letter  to  Brossette,  rightly 
said  that  these  are  "the  most  beautiful  verses  that  M.  Despreaux  ever 
made." 

1  4th  Series  of  our  works,  LITERATURE,  book  i.,  Preface,  p.  3 :  "It  is  in 
prose,  perhaps,  that  our  literary  glory  is  most  certain.  .  .  .  What  modern 
aation  reckons  prose  writers  that  approach  those  of  our  nation  ?  The  coun- 
try of  Shakspeare  and  Milton  does  not  possess,  since  Bacon,  a  single  prose 
writer  of  the  first  order  [?] ;  that  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso,  is 
in  vain  proud  of  Machiavel,  whose  sound  and  manly  diction,  like  the  thought 
that  it  expresses,  is  destitute  of  grandeur.  Spain,  it  is  true,  has  produced 
Cervantes,  an  admirable  writer,  but  he  is  alone.  .  .  .  France  can  easily 
show  a  list  of  more  than  twenty  prose  writers  of  genius :  Froissard,  Eabelais, 
Montaigne,  Descartes,  Pascal,  La  Eochefoucauld,  MolieTe,  Eetz,  La  Bruyere, 
Malebranche,  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  Flechier,  Bourdaloue,  Massillon,  Mme.  de 
Sevigne',  Saint-Simon,  Montesquieu,  Voltaire,  Buffon,  J.  J.  Eonsseau ;  with- 
out speaking  of  so  many  more  that  would  be  in  the  first  rank  everywhere 
else, — Amiot,  Calvin,  Pasquier,  D'Aubigne,  Charron,  Balzac,  Vaugelas,  Pe- 
lisson,  Nicole,  Fleury,  Bussi,  Saint-Evremont,  Mme.  de  Lafayette,  Mme  de 
Maintenon,  Fontenelle,  Vauvenargues,  Hamilton,  Le  Sage,  Prevost,  Beau- 
marchais,  etc.  It  may  be  said  with  the  exactest  truth,  that  French  prose  is 
without  a  rival  in  modern  Europe  ;  and,  even  in  antiquity,  superior  to  the 
Latin  prose,  at  least  in  the  quantity  and  variety  of  models,  it  has  no  equal 
but  the  Greek  prose,  in  its  palmiest  days,  in  the  days  of  Herodotus  and  De- 
mosthenes. I  do  not  prefer  Demosthenes  to  Pascal,  and  it  would  be  difficult 
for  me  to  put  Plato  himself  above  Bossuet.  Plato  and  Bossuet,  in  my 
opinion,  are  the  two  greatest  masters  of  human  language,  with  manifest  dif- 
ferences, as  well  as  more  than  one  trait  of  resemblance;  both  ordinarily 
speak  like  the  people,  with  the  last  degree  of  simplicity,  and  at  moments 
ascending  without  effort  to  a  poetry  as  magnificent  as  that  of  Homer,  ingeni- 
ous and  polished  to  the  most  charming  delicacy,  and  by  instinct  majestic 
and  sublime.  Plato,  without  doubt,  has  incomparable  graces,  the  supreme 
serenity,  and,  as  it  were,  the  demi-smile  of  the  divine  sage.  Bossuet,  on 
his  side,  has  the  pathetic,  in  which  he  has  no  rival  but  the  great  Corneille. 
When  such  writers  are  possessed,  is  it  not  a  religion  to  render  them  the 
honor  that  is  their  due,  that  of  a  regular  and  profound  study?" 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    187 

arts  were  carried  to  such  perfection,  remain  ordinary  in  the  other 
arts  ?  Was  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  wanting,  then,  to  that 
society  so  polished,  to  that  magnificent  court,  to  those  great  lords 
and  those  great  ladies  passionately  loving  luxury  and  elegance, 
to  that  public  of  the  elite,  enamored  of  every  kind  of  glory,  whose 
enthusiasm  defended  the  Cid  against  Eichelieu?  No;  France 
in  the  seventeenth  century  was  a  whole,  and  produced  artists  that 
she  can  place  by  the  side  of  her  poets,  her  philosophers,  her 
orators. 

But,  in  order  to  admire  our  artists,  it  is  necessary  to  compre- 
hend them. 

We  do  not  believe  that  imagination  has  been  less  freely  im- 
parted to  France  than  to  any  other  nation  of  Europe.  It  has 
even  had  its  reign  among  us.  It  is  fancy  that  rules  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  and  inspires  the  literature  and  the  arts  of  the 
Renaissance.  But  a  great  revolution  intervened  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  seventeenth  century.  France  at  that  moment  seems 
to  pass  from  youth  to  virility.  Instead  of  abandoning  imagina- 
tion to  itself,  we  apply  ourselves  from  that  moment  to  restrain  it 
without  destroying  it,  to  moderate  it,  as  the  Greeks  did  by  the 
aid  of  taste ;  as  in  the  progress  of  life  and  society  we  learn  to  re- 
press or  conceal  what  is  too  individual  in  character.  An  end  is 
made  of  the  literature  of  the  preceding  age.  A  new  poetry,  a 
new  prose,  begin  to  appear,  which,  during  an  entire  century,  bear 
fruits  sufficiently  beautiful.  Art  follows  the  general  movement ; 
after  having  been  elegant  and  graceful,  it  becomes  in  its  turn 
serious ;  it  no  longer  aims  at  originality  and  extraordinary  effects ; 
it  neither  flashes  nor  dazzles ;  it  speaks,  above  all,  to  the  mind 
and  the  soul.  Hence  its  good  qualities  and  also  its  defects.  In 
general,  it  is  somewhat  wanting  in  brilliancy  and  coloring,  but  it 
is  in  the  highest  degree  expressive. 

Some  time  since  we  have  changed  all  that.  We  have  discov- 
ered, somewhat  late,  that  we  have  not  sufficient  imagination ;  we 
are  in  training  to  acquire  it,  it  is  true,  at  the  expense  of  reason, 
alas !  also  at  the  expense  of  soul,  which  is  forgotten,  repudiated, 


188  LECTURE   TENTH. 

proscribed.  At  this  moment,  color  and  form  are  the  order  of  the 
day,  in  poetry,  in  painting,  in  every  thing.  We  are  beginning  to 
run  mad  with  Spanish  painting.  The  Flemish  and  Venetian 
schools  are  gaining  ground  on  the  schools  of  Florence  and  Rome. 
Rossini  equals  Mozart,  and  Gluck  will  soon  seem  to  us  insipid. 

Young  artists,  who,  rightly  disgusted  with  the  dry  and  inani- 
mate manner  of  David,  undertake  to  renovate  French  painting, 
who  would  rob  the  sun  of  its  heat  and  splendor,  remember  that 
of  all  beings  in  the  world,  the  greatest  is  still  man,  and  that  what 
is  greatest  in  man  is  his  intelligence,  and  above  all,  his  heart ; 
that  it  is  this  heart,  then,  which  you  must  put  and  develop  on 
your  canvas.  This  is  the  most  elevated  object  of  art.  In  order 
to  reach  it,  do  not  make  yourselves  disciples  of  Flemings,  Vene- 
tians, and  Spaniards ;  return,  return  to  the  masters  of  our  great 
national  school  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

We  bow  with  respectful  admiration  before  the  schools  of  Rome 
and  Florence,  at  once  ideal  and  living ;  but,  those  excepted,  we 
maintain  that  the  French  school  equals  or  surpasses  all  others. 
We  prefer  neither  Murillo,  Rubens,  Corregio,  nor  Titian  himself 
to  Lesueur  and  Poussin,  because,  if  the  former  have  an  incompara- 
ble hand  and  color,  our  two  countrymen 'are  much  greater  in 
thought  and  expression. 

What  a  destiny  was  that  of  Eustache  Lesueur ! l  He  was 
born  at  Paris  about  1617,  and  he  never  went  out  of  it.  Poor 
and  humble,  he  passed  his  life  in  the  churches  and  convents 
where  he  worked.  The  only  sweetness  of  his  sad  days,  his  only 
consolation  was  his  wife :  he  loses  her,  and  goes  to  die,  at  thirty- 
eight,  in  that  cloister  of  Chartreux,  which  his  pencil  has  immor- 
talized. What  resemblance  at  once,  and  what  difference  between 
his  life  and  that  of  Raphael,  who  also  died  young,  but  in  the 
midst  of  pleasures,  in  honors,  and  already  almost  in  purple !  Our 
Raphael  was  not  the  lover  of  Fornarina  and  the  favorite  of  a 
pope :  he  was  Christian ;  he  is  Christianity  in  art. 

1  See  the  APPENDIX,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   189 

Lesueur  is  a  genius  wholly  French.  Scarcely  having  escaped 
from  the  hands  of  Simon  Vouet,  he  formed  himself  according  to 
the  model  which  he  had  in  the  soul.  He  never  saw  the  sky  of 
Italy.  He  knew  some  fragments  of  the  antique,  some  pictures 
of  Raphael,  and  the  designs  that  Poussin  sent  him.  With  these 
feeble  resources,  and  guided  by  a  happy  instinct,  in  less  than  ten 
years  he  mounted  by  a  continual  progress  to  the  perfection  of  his 
talent,  and  expired  at  the  moment  when,  finally  sure  of  himself, 
he  was  about  to  produce  new  and  more  admirable  master-pieces. 
Follow  him  from  the  St.  Bruno  completed  in  1648,  through  the 
St.  Paul  of  1649,  to  the  Vision  of  St.  Benedict  in  1651,  and  to 
the  Muses,  scarcely  finished  before  his  death.  Lesueur  went  on 
adding  to  his  essential  qualities  which  he  owed  to  his  own  genius, 
and  to  the  national  genius,  I  mean  composition  and  expression, 
qualities  which  he  had  dreamed  of,  or  had  caught  glimpses  of. 
His  design  from  day  to  day  became  more  pure,  without  ever 
being  that  of  the  Florentine  school,  and  the  same  is  true  of  his 
coloring. 

In  Lesueur  every  thing  is  directed  towards  expression,  every 
thing  is  in  the  service  of  the  mind,  every  thing  is  idea  and  senti- 
ment. There  is  no  affectation,  no  mannerism  ;  there  is  a  perfect 
naivete;  his  figures  sometimes  would  seem  even  a  little  com- 
mon, so  natural  are  they,  if  a  Divine  breath  did  not  animate 
them.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  his  favorite  subjects  do  not 
exact  a  brilliant  coloring :  he  oftenest  retraces  scenes  mournful 
or  austere.  But  as  in  Christianity  by  the  side  of  suffering  and 
resignation  is  faith  with  hope,  so  Lesueur  joins  to  the  pathetic 
sweetness  and  grace;  and  this  man  charms  me  at  the  same  time 
that  he  moves  me. 

The  works  of  Lesueur  are  almost  always  great  wholes  that 
demanded  profound  meditation,  and  the  most  flexible  talent,  in 
order  to  preserve  in  them  unity  of  subject,  and  to  give  them  va- 
riety and  harmony.  The  History  of  St.  Bruno,  the  founder  of 
the  order  des  Chartreuz,  is  a  vast  melancholy  poem,  in  which 
are  represented  the  different  scenes  of  monastic  life.  The  If  is- 


190  LECTURE  TENTH. 

tory  of  St.  Martin  and  St.  Benedict  has  not  come  down  to  us 
entire ;  but  the  two  fragments  of  it  that  we  possess,  the  Mass  of 
St.  Martin,  and  the  Vision  of  St.  Benedict,  allow  us  to  compare 
that  great  work  with  every  better  thing  of  the  kind  that  has 
been  done  in  Italy,  as,  to  speak  sincerely,  the  Muses  and  the  His- 
tory of  Love,  appear  to  us  to  equal  at  least  the  Farnesina. 

In  the  History  of  St.  Bruno,  it  is  particularly  necessary  to  re- 
mark St.  Bruno,  prostrated  before  a  crucifix,  the  saint  reading  a 
letter  of  the  pope,  his  death,  his  apotheosis.  Is  it  possible  to 
carry  meditation,  humiliation,  rapture  farther  ?  St.  Paul  preach- 
ing at  Ephesus  reminds  one  of  the  School  of  Athens,  by  the  ex- 
tent of  the  scene,  the  employment  of  architecture,  and  the  skilful 
distribution  of  groups.  In  spite  of  the  number  of  personages, 
and  the  diversity  of  episodes,  the  picture  wholly  centres  in  St. 
Paul.  He  preaches,  and  upon  his  words  hang  those  who  are 
listening,  of  every  sex,  of  every  age,  in  the  most  varied  attitudes. 
In  that  we  behold  the  grand  lines  of  the  Roman  school,  its  de- 
sign full  of  nobleness  and  truth  at  the  same  time.  What  charm- 
ing and  grave  heads  !  What  graceful,  bold,  and  always  natural 
movements !  Here,  that  child  with  ringlets,  full  of  naive  enthu- 
siasm ;  there,  that  old  man  with  bended  knees,  and  hands  joined. 
Are  not  all  those  beautiful  heads,  and  those  draperies,  too,  worthy 
of  Raphael  ?  But  the  marvel  of  the  picture  is  the  figure  of  St. 
Paul,1 — it  is  that  of  the  Olympic  Jupiter,  animated  by  a  new 
spirit.  The  Mass  of  St.  Martin  carries  into  the  soul  an  impres- 
sion of  peace  and  silence.  The  Vision  of  .St.  Benedict  has  the 
character  of  simplicity  full  of  grandeur.  A  desert,  the  saint  on 
his  knees,  contemplating  his  sister,  St.  Scholastique,  who  is  as- 
cending to  heaven,  borne  up  by  angels,  accompanied  by  two 
young  girls,  crowned  with  flowers,  and  bearing  the  palm,  the  sym- 
bol of  virginity.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  show  St.  Benedict  the 
abode  whither  his  sister  is  going  to  enjoy  eternal  peace.  A 
slight  ray  of  the  sun  pierces  the  cloud.  St.  Benedict  is  as  it  were 

1  See  the  APPENDIX. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    191 

lifted  up  from  the  earth  by  this  ecstatic  vision.  One  scarcely  de- 
sires a  more  lively  color,  and  the  expression  is  divine.  Those  two 
virgins,  a  little  too  tall,  perhaps,  how  beautiful  and  pure  they  are ! 
How  sweet  are  those  forms !  How  grave  and  gentle  are  those 
faces !  The  person  of  the  holy  monk,  with  all  the  material  ac- 
cessories, is  perfectly  natural,  for  it  remains  on  the  earth ;  whilst 
his  face,  where  his  soul  shines  forth,  is  wholly  ideal,  and  already 
in  heaven. 

But  the  chef-d'oeuvre  of  Lesueur  is,  in  our  opinion,  the  Descent 
from  tlie  Cross,  or  rather  the  enshrouding  of  Jesus  Christ,  already 
descended  from  the  cross,  whom  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  Nicode- 
mus,  and  St.  John  are  placing  in  the  shroud.  On  the  left,  Mag- 
dalen, in  tears,  kisses  the  feet  of  Jesus ;  on  the  right,  are  the  holy 
women  and  the  Virgin.  It  is  impossible  to  carry  the  pathetic 
farther  and  preserve  beauty.  The  holy  women,  placed  in  front, 
have  each  their  particular  grief.  While  one  of  them  abandons 
herself  to  despair,  an  immense  but  internal  and  thoughtful  sad- 
ness is  upon  the  face  of  the  mother  of  the  crucified.  She  has 
comprehended  the  divine  benefit  of  the  redemption  of  the  human 
race,  and  her  grief,  sustained  by  this  thought,  is  calm  and  re- 
signed. And  then  what  dignity  in  that  head !  It,  in  some 
sort,  sums  up  the  whole  picture,  and  gives  to  it  its  character, 
that  of  a  profound  and  subdued  emotion.  I  have  seen  many 
Descents  from  the  Cross  ;  I  have  seen  that  of  Rubens  at  Ant- 
werp, in  which  the  sanctity  of  the  subject  has,  as  it  were,  con- 
strained the  great  Flemish  painter  to  join  sensibility  and  senti- 
ment to  color ;  none  of  those  pictures  have  touched  me  like  that 
of  Lesueur.  All  the  parts  of  art  are  there  in  the  service  of  ex- 
pression. The  drawing  is  severe  and  strong ;  even  the  color, 
without  being  brilliant,  surpasses  that  of  the  St.  Bruno,  the 
Mass  of  St.  Martin,  the  St.  Paul,  and  even  that  of  the  Vision 
of  St.  Benedict ;  as  if  Lesueur  had  wished  to  bring  together  in 
it  all  the  powers  of  his  soul,  all  the  resources  of  his  talent  I1 

1  This  picture  had  been  made  for  a  chapel  of  the  church  of  St.  Gervais. 


192  LECTURE    TENTH. 

Now,  regard  the  Muses, — other  scenes,  other  beauties,  the 
same  genius.  Those  are  Pagan  pictures,  but  Christianity  is  in 
them  also,  by  reason  of  the  adorable  chastity  with  which  Le- 
sueur  has  clothed  them.  All  critics  have  emulously  shown  the 
mythological  errors  into  which  poor  Lesueur  fell,  and  they  have 
not  wanted  occasion  to  deplore  that  he  had  not  made  the  jour- 
ney to  Italy  and  studied  antiquity  more.  But  who  can  have  the 
strange  idea  of  searching  in  Lesueur  for  an  archeology  ?  I  seek 
and  find  in  him  the  very  genius  of  painting.  Is  not  that  Terp- 
sichore, well  or  ill  named,  with  a  harp  a  little  too  strong,  it  is 
said,  as  if  the  Muse  had  no  particular  gift,  in  her  modest  atti- 
tude the  symbol  of  becoming  grace  ?  In  that  group  of  three 
Muses,  to  which  one  may  give  what  name  he  pleases,  is  not  the 
one  that  holds  upon  her  knees  a  book  of  music,  who  sings  or  is 
about  to  sing,  the  most  ravishing  creature,  a  St.  Cecilia  tha( 
preludes  just  before  abandoning  herself  to  the  intoxication  of  in- 
spiration ?  And  in  those  pictures  there  is  brilliancy  and  color- 
ing ;  the  landscape  is  beautifully  lighted,  as  if  Poussin  had 
guided  the  hand  of  his  friend. 

Poussin !  What  a  name  I  pronounce.  If  Lesueur  is  the 
painter  of  sentiment,  Poussin  is  the  painter  of  thought.  He  is 
in  some  sort  the  philosopher  of  painting.  His  pictures  are  reli- 
gious or  moral  lectures  that  testify  a  great  mind  as  well  as  a 
great  heart.  It  is  sufficient  to  recall  the  Seven  Sacraments,  the 
Deluge,  the  Arcadia,  the  Truth  that  Time  frees  from  the  Taints 
of  Envy,  the  Will  of  Eudamidas,  and  the  Dance  of  Human 
Life.  And  the  style  is  equal  to  the  conception.  Poussin  draws 
like  a  Florentine,  composes  like  a  Frenchman,  and  often  equals 
Lesueur  in  expression ;  coloring  alone  is  sometimes  wanting  to 
him.  As  well  as  Racine,  he  is  smitten  with  the  antique  beauty, 
and  imitates  it;  but,  like  Racine,  he  always  remains  original. 
In  place  of  the  naivete  and  unique  charm  of  Lesueur,  he  has  a 


It  formed  the  altar-piece,  and  in  the  foreground  there  was  the  admirable 
Bearing  of  the  Cross,  which  is  Btill  seen  in  the  Museum. 


FRENCH  AKT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    193 

severe  simplicity,  with  a  correctness  that  never  abandons  him. 
Remember,  too,  that  he  cultivated  every  kind  of  painting.  He 
is  at  once  a  great  historical  painter  and  a  great  landscape  paint- 
er,— he  treats  religious  subjects  as  well  as  profane  subjects,  and 
by  turns  is  inspired  by  antiquity  and  the  Bible.  He  lived  much 
at  Rome,  it  is  true,  and  died  there ;  but  he  also  worked  in 
France,  and  almost  always  for  France.  Scarcely  had  he  become 
known,  when  Richelieu  attracted  him  to  Paris  and  retained  him 
there,  loading  him  with  honors,  and  giving  him  the  commission 
of  first  painter  in  ordinary  to  the  king,  with  the  general  direction 
of  all  the  works  of  painting,  and  all  the  ornaments  of  the  royal 
houses.  During  that  sojourn  of  two  years  in  Paris,  he  made 
the  Last  Supper  (Cene),  the  St.  Francois  Xavier,  the  Truth 
that  Time  frees  from  the  Taints  of  Envy.  It  was  also  to  France, 
to  his  friend  M.  de  Chantelou,  that  from  Rome  he  addressed  the 
Inspiration  of  St.  Paul,  as  well  as  the  second  series  of  the 
Seven  Sacraments,  an  immense  composition  that,  for  grandeur 
of  thought,  can  vie  with  the  Stanze  of  Raphael.  I  speak  of  it 
from  the  engravings  ;  for  the  Seven  Sacraments  are  no  longer  in 
France.  Eternal  shame  of  the  eighteenth  century  !  It  was  at 
least  necessary  to  wrest  from  the  Greeks  the  pediments  of  the 
Parthenon, — we,  we  delivered  up  to  strangers,  we  sold  all  those 
monuments  of  French  genius  which  Richelieu  and  Mazarin,  with 
religious  care,  had  collected.  Public  indignation  did  not  avert 
the  act !  And  there  has  not  since  been  found  in  France  a  king, 
a  statesman,  to  interdict  letting  the  master-pieces  of  art  that 
honor  the  nation  depart  without  authorization  from  the  national 
territory  I1  There  has  not  been  found  a  government  which  has 
undertaken  at  least  to  repurchase  those  that  we  have  lost,  to 
get  back  again  the  great  works  of  Poussin,  Lesueur,  and  so  many 
others,  scattered  in  Europe,  instead  of  squandering  millions  to 


1  Such  a  law  was  the  first  act  of  the  first  assembly  of  aifranchised  Greece, 
and  all  the  friends  of  art  have  applauded  it  from  end  to  end  of  civilized 
Europe. 

9 


194  LECTURE  TENTH. 

acquire  the  baboons  of  Holland,  as  Louis  XIV.  said,  or  Spanish 
canvasses,  in  truth  of  an  admirable  color,  but  without  nobleness 
and  moral  expression.1  I  know  and  I  love  the  Dutch  pastorals 
and  the  cows  of  Potter ;  I  am  not  insensible  to  the  sombre  and 
ardent  coloring  of  Zurbaran,  to  the  brilliant  Italian  imitations  of 
Murillo  and  Velasquez ;  but  in  fine,  what  is  all  that  in  compari- 
son with  serious  and  powerful  compositions  like  the  Seven  Sacra- 
ments, for  example,  that  profound  representation  of  Christian 
rites,  a  work  of  the  highest  faculties  of  the  intellect  and  the  soul, 
in  which  the  intellect  and  the  soul  will  ever  find  an  exhaustless 
subject  of  study  and  meditation !  Thank  God,  the  graver  of 
Pesne  has  saved  them  from  our  ingratitude  and  barbarity. 
Whilst  the  originals  decorate  the  gallery  of  a  great  English  lord,5 
the  love  and  the  talent  of  a  Pesne,  of  a  Stella,  have  preserved 
for  us  faithful  copies  in  those  expressive  engravings  that  one 
never  grows  tired  of  contemplating,  that  every  time  we  examine 
them,  reveal  to  us  some  new  side  of  the  genius  of  our  great 
countryman.  Regard  especially  the  Extreme  Unction !  What 
a  sublime  and  at  the  same  time  almost  graceful  scene  !  One 
would  call  it  an  antique  bas-relief,  so  many  groups  are  properly 
distributed  in  it,  with  natural  and  varied  attitudes.  The  drape- 
ries are  as  admirable  as  those  of  a  fragment  of  the  Panathencea, 
which  is  in  the  Louvre.  The  figures  are  all  beautiful.  Beauty 
of  figures  belongs  to  sculpture,  one  is  about  to  say : — yes,  but  it 
also  belongs  to  painting,  if  you  have  yourself  the  eye  of  the 
painter,  if  you  have  been  struck  with  the  expression  of  those 
postures,  those  heads,  those  gestures,  and  almost  those  looks ; 
for  every  thing  lives,  every  thing  breathes,  even  in  those  engra- 
vings, and  if  it  were  the  place,  we  would  endeavor  to  make  the 
reader  penetrate  with  us  into  those  secrets  of  Christian  sentiment 
which  are  also  the  secrets  of  art. 


1  See  the  APPENDIX. 

a  The  Seven  /Sacraments  of  Poussin  are  now  in  the  Bridgewater  Gallery 
See  the  APPENDIX. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    195 

We  endeavor  to  console  ourselves  for  having  lost  the  Seven 
Sacraments,  and  for  not  having  known  how  to  keep  from  Eng- 
land and  Germany  so  many  productions  of  Poussin,  now  buried 
in  foreign  collections,1  by  going  to  see  at  the  Louvre  what  re- 
mains to  us  of  the  great  French  artist, — thirty  pictures  produced 
at  different  epochs  of  his  life,  which,  for  the  most  part,  worthily 
sustain  his  renown, — the  portrait  of  Poussin,  one  of  the  Baccha- 
nals made  for  Richelieu,  Mars  and  Venus,  the  Death  of  Adonis, 
the  Rape  of  the  Sabines,*  Eliezer  and  Rebecca,  Moses  saved  from 
the  Waters,  the  Infant  Jesus  on  the  Knees  of  the  Virgin  and  St. 
Joseph  standing  by,1  especially  the  Manna  in  the  Desert,  the 
Judgment  of  Solomon,  the  Blind  Men  of  Jericho,  the  Woman 
taken  in  Adultery,  the  Inspiration  of  St.  Paul,  the  Diogenes, 
the  Deluge,  the  Arcadia.  Time  has  turned  the  color,  which 
was  never  very  brilliant ;  but  it  has  not  been  able  to  disturb 
what  will  make  them  live  forever, — the  design,  the  composition, 
and  the  expression.  The  Deluge  has  remained,  and  in  fact  will 
always  be,  the  most  striking.  After  so  many  masters  who  have 
treated  the  same  subject,  Poussin  has  found  the  secret  of  being 
original,  and  more  pathetic  than  his  predecessors,  in  representing 
the  solemn  moment  when  the  race  is  about  to  disappear.  There 
are  few  details  ;  some  dead  bodies  are  floating  upon  the  abyss  ; 
a  sinister-looking  moon  has  scarcely  risen  ;  a  few  moments  and 
mankind  will  be  no  more ;  the  last  mother  uselessly  extends  her 
last  child  to  the  last  father,  who  cannot  take  it,  and  the  serpent 
that  has  destroyed  mankind  darts  forth  triumphant.  We  try  in 
vain  to  find  in  the  Deluge  some  signs  of  a  trembling  hand :  the 


1  See  the  APPENDIX. 

2  In  the  midst  of  this  scene  of  brutal  violence,  everybody  has  remarked 
this  delicate  trait — a  Eoman  quite  young,  almost  juvenile,  while  possessing 
himself  by  force  of  a  young  girl  taking  refuge  in  the  arms  of  her  mother, 
asks  her  from  her  mother  with  an  air  at  once  passionate  and  restrained.    In 
order  to  appreciate  this  picture,  compare  it  with  that  of  David  in  the  ensemble 
and  in  the  details. 

1  In  fact,  the  St.  Joseph  is  here  the  important  personage.    He  governs  the 
whole  scene ;  he  prays,  he  is  as  it  were  in  ecstasy. 


196  LECTURE   TENTH. 

soul  that  sustained  and  conducted  that  hand  makes  itself  felt  by 
our  soul,  and  profoundly  moves  it.  Stop  at  that  scene  of 
mourning,  and  almost  by  its  side  let  your  eyes  rest  upon  that 
fresh  landscape  and  upon  those  shepherds  that  surround  a  tomb. 
The  most  aged,  with  a  knee  on  the  ground,  reads  these  words 
graven  upon  the  stone  :  Et  in  Arcadia  ego,  and  I  also  lived  in 
Arcadia.  At  the  left  a  shepherd  listens  with  serious  attention. 
At  the  right  is  a  charming  group,  composed  of  a  shepherd  in 
the  spring-time  of  life,  and  a  young  girl  of  ravishing  beauty.  An 
artless  admiration  is  painted  on  the  face  of  the  young  peasant, 
who  looks  with  happiness  on  his  beautiful  companion.  As  for 
her,  her  adorable  face  is  not  even  veiled  with  the  slightest  shade  ; 
she  smiles,  her  hand  resting  carelessly  upon  the  shoulder  of  the 
young  man,  and  she  has  no  appearance  of  comprehending  that 
lecture  given  to  beauty,  youth,  and  love.  I  confess  that,  for 
this  picture  alone,  of  so  touching  a  philosophy,  I  would  give 
many  master-pieces  of  coloring,  all  the  pastorals  of  Potter,  all 
the  badinages  of  Ostade,  all  the  buffooneries  of  Teniers. 

Lesueur  and  Poussin,  by  very  different  but  nearly  equal  titles, 
are  at  the  head  of  our  great  painting  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
After  them,  what  artists  again  are  Claude  Lorrain  and  Philippe 
de  Champagne  ? 

Do  you  know  in  Italy  or  Holland  a  greater  landscape  painter 
than  Claude  ?  And  seize  well  his  true  character.  Look  at  those 
vast  and  beautiful  solitudes,  lighted  by  the  first  or  last  rays  of 
the  sun,  and  tell  me  whether  those  solitudes,  those  trees,  those 
waters,  those  mountains,  that  light,  that  silence, — whether  all 
that  nature  has  a  soul,  and  whether  those  luminous  and  pure 
horizons  do  not  lift  you  involuntarily,  in  ineffable  reveries,  to  the 
invisible  source  of  beauty  and  grace !  Lorrain  is,  above  all,  the 
painter  of  light,  and  his  works  might  be  called  the  history 
of  light  and  all  its  combinations,  in  small  and  great,  when 
it  is  poured  out  over  large  plains  or  breaks  in  the  most  varied 
accidents,  on  land,  on  waters,  in  the  heavens,  in  its  eternal  source. 
The  human  scenes  thrown  into  one  corner  have  no  other  object 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    197 

than  to  relieve  and  make  appear  to  advantage  the  scenes  of 
nature  by  harmony  or  contrast.  In  the  Village  Fete,  life,  noise, 
movement  are  in  front, — peace  and  grandeur  are  at  the  founda- 
tion of  the  landscape,  and  that  is  truly  the  picture.  The  same 
effect  is  in  the  Cattle  Crossing  a  River.  The  landscape  placed 
immediately  under  your  eyes  has  nothing  in  it  very  rare,  we  can 
find  such  a  one  anywhere  ;  but  follow  the  perspective, — it  leads 
you  across  flowering  fields,  a  beautiful  river,  ruins,  mountains 
that  overlook  these  ruins,  and  you  lose  yourself  in  infinite  distan- 
ces. That  Landscape  crossed  by  a  river,  where  a  peasant  waters 
his  herd,  means  nothing  great  at  first  sight.  Contemplate  it  some 
time,  and  peace,  a  sort  of  meditativeness  in  nature,  a  well-gradua- 
ted perspective,  will,  little  by  little,  gain  your  heart,  and  give  you 
in  that  small  picture  a  penetrating  charm.  The  picture  called  a 
Landscape  represents  a  vast  champagne  filled  with  trees,  and 
lighted  by  the  rising  sun, — in  it  there  is  freshness  and — already 
— warmth,  mystery,  and  splendor,  with  skies  of  the  sweetest  har- 
mony. A  Dance  at  Sunset  expresses  the  close  of  a  beautiful  day. 
One  sees  in  it,  one  feels  in  it  the  decline  of  the  heat  of  the  day ; 
in  the  foreground  are  some  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  dancing 
by  the  side  of  their  flocks.1 

Is  it  not  strange,  that  Champagne  has  been  put  in  the  Flemish 
school  ?*  He  was  born  at  Brussels,  it  is  true,  but  he  came  very 
early  to  Paris,  and  his  true  master  was  Poussin,  who  counselled 
him.  He  devoted  his  talent  to  France,  lived  there,  died  there, 
and  what  is  decisive,  his  manner  is  wholly  French.  Will  it  be 


1  The  pictures  of  Claude  Lorrain,  of  which  we  have  just  spoken,  are  iii  the 
Museum  of  Paris.  In  all  there  are  thirteen,  whilst  the  Museum  of  Madrid 
alone  possesses  almost  as  many,  while  there  are  in  England  more  than  fifty, 
and  those  the  most  admirable.  See  the  APPENDIX. 

*  The  last  Notice  of  the  Pictures  exhibited  in  the  Gallery  of  the  National  Mu- 
seum of  the  Louvre,  1852,  although  its  author,  M.  Villot,  is  surely  a  man  of 
incontestable  knowledge  and  taste,  persists  in  placing  Champagne  in  the 
Flemish  school.  En  revanche,  a  learned  foreigner,  M.  Waageu,  claims  him 
for  the  French  school.  Kunstwerke  and  Kiinstler  in  Paris,  Berlin,  1839, 
p.  651. 


198  LECTURE    TENTH. 

said  that  he  owes  to  Flanders  his  color  ?  We  respond  that  this 
quality  is  balanced  by  a  grave  defect  that  he  also  owes  to  Flan- 
ders, the  want  of  ideality  in  the  figures ;  and  it  was  from  France 
that  he  learned  how  to  repair  this  defect  by  beauty  of  moral  ex- 
pression. Champagne  is  inferior  to  Lesueur  and  Poussin,  but  he 
is  of  their  family.  He  was,  also,  of  those  artists  contemporaneous 
with  Comeille,  simple,  poor,  virtuous,  Christian.1  Champagne 
worked  both  for  the  convent  of  the  Carmelites  in  the  Rue  St. 
Jacques,  that  venerable  abode  of  ardent  and  sublime  piety,  and 
Port-Royal,  that  place  of  all  others  that  contained  in  the  smallest 
space  the  most  virtue  and  genius,  so  many  admirable  men  and 
women  worthy  of  them.  What  has  become  of  that  famous  cru- 
cifix that  he  painted  for  the  Church  of  the  Carmelites,  a  master- 
piece of  perspective  that  upon  a  horizontal  plane  appeared  per- 
pendicular ?  It  perished  with  the  holy  house.  The  Last  Supper 
(  Cene)  is  a  living  picture,  on  account  of  the  truth  of  all  the  figures, 
movements,  and  postures ;  but  to  my  eyes  it  is  blemished  by  the 
absence  of  the  ideal.  I  am  obliged  to  say  as  much  of  the  Repast 
with  Simon  the  Pharisee.  The  chef-d'oeuvre  of  Champagne  is 
the  Apparition  of  St.  Gervais  and  St.  Protais  to  St.  Ambrose  in 
a  Basilica  of  Milan.  All  the  qualities  of  French  art  are  seen  in 
it, — simplicity  and  grandeur  in  composition,  with  a  profound 
expression.  On  that  canvas  are  only  four  personages,  the  two 
martyrs  and  St.  Paul,  who  presents  them  to  St.  Ambrose.  Those 
four  figures  fill  the  temple,  lighted  above  all  in  the  obscurity  of 


1  Well  appreciated  by  Kichelieu,  he  preferred  his  esteem  to  his  benefits. 
One  day  when  an  envoy  of  Eichelieu  said  to  him  that  he  had  only  to  ask 
freely  what  he  wished  for  the  advancement  of  his  fortune,  Champagne  re- 
sponded that  if  M.  the  Cardinal  could  make  him  a  more  skilful  painter  than  he 
was,  it  was  the  only  thing  that  he  asked  of  his  Eminence ;  but  that  being  im- 
possible, he  only  desired  the  honor  of  his  good  graces.  Felibien,  Entretiens, 
1st  edition,  4to.,  part  v.,  p.  171 ;  and  de  Piles,  Abrege  de  la  Vie  des  Peintres, 
2d  edition,  p.  500. — "As  he  had  much  love  for  justice  and  truth,  provided 
he  satisfied  what  they  both  demanded,  he  easily  passed  over  all  the  rest." — 
Necrologe  de  Port-Royal,  p.  336. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   199 

the  night,  by  the  luminous  apparition.  The  two  martyrs  are  full 
of  majesty.  St.  Ambrose,  kneeling  and  in  prayer,  is,  as  it  were, 
seized  with  terror.1 

I  certainly  admire  Champagne  as  an  historical  painter,  and  even 
as  a  landscape  painter ;  but  he  is  perhaps  greatest  as  a  portrait 
painter.  In  portraits  truth  and  nature  are  particularly  in  their 
place,  relieved  by  coloring,  and  idealized  in  proper  measure  by 
expression.  The  portraits  of  Champagne  are  so  many  monu- 
ments in  which  his  most  illustrious  contemporaries  will  live  for- 
ever. Every  thing  about  them  is  strikingly  real,  grave,  and 
severe,  with  a  penetrating  sweetness.  Should  the  records  of  Port- 
Royal  be  lost,  all  Port-Royal  might  be  found  in  Champagne. 
Among  those  portraits  we  see  the  inflexible  Saint-Cyran,5  as  well 
as  his  persecutor,  the  imperious  Richelieu.3  We  see,  too,  the 
learned,  the  intrepid  Antoine  Arnaud,  to  whom  the  contempora- 
ries of  Bossuet  decreed  the  name  of  Great ;  *  and  Mme.  Angelique 
Arnaud,  with  her  naive  and  strong  figure.5  Among  them  is 
mother  Agnes  and  the  humble  daughter  of  Champagne  himself, 
sister  St.  Suzanne.6  She  has  just  been  miraculously  cured,  and 
her  whole  prostrated  person  bears  still  the  impress  of  a  relic  of 
suffering.  Mother  Agnes,  kneeling  before  her,  regards  her  with 
a  look  of  grateful  joy.  The  place  of  the  scene  is  a  poor  cell ;  a 
wooden  cross  hanging  on  the  wall,  and  some  straw  chairs,  are  all 
the  ornaments.  On  the  picture  is  the  inscription, —  Christo  uni 
medico  animarum  et  corporum,  etc.  There  is  possessed  the 


I  See  the  APPENDIX. 

II  The  original  is  in  the  Museum  of  Grenoble ;  but  see  the  engraving  of 
Morin ;  see  also  that  of  Daret,  after  the  beautiful  design  of  Demonstier. 

s  In  the  Museum  of  the  Louvre ;  see  also  the  engraving  of  Morin. 

4  The  original  is  now  in  the  Chateau  of  Sable,  belonging  to  the  Marquis  of 
Rouge  ;  see  the  engraving  of  Simonneau  in  Perrault.    The  beautiful  engra- 
ving of  Edelinck  was  made  after  a  different  original,  attributed  to  a  nephew 
of  Champagne. 

5  The  original  is  also  in  the  possession  of  the  Marquis  of  Eouge ;  the  ad- 
mirable engraving  of  Van  Schupen  may  take  its  place. 

*  In  the  Museum. 


200  LECTURE   TENTH. 

Christian  stoicism  of  Port-Royal  in  its  imposing  austerity.  Add 
to  all  these  portraits  that  of  Champagne ; l  for  the  painter  may 
be  put  by  the  side  of  his  personages. 

Had  France  produced  in  the  seventeenth  century  only  these 
four  great  artists,  it  would  be  necessary  to  give  an  important 
place  to  the  French  school ;  but  she  counts  many  other  painters 
of  the  greatest  merit.  Among  these  we  may  distinguish  P. 
Mignard,  so  much  admired  in  his  times,  so  little  known  now,  and 
so  worthy  of  being  known.  How  have  we  been  able  to  let  fall 
into  oblivion  the  author  of  the  immense  fresco  of  Val-de-grace, 
so  celebrated  by  Moliere,  which  is  perhaps  the  greatest  page  of 
painting  in  the  world ! 2  What  strikes  at  first,  in  this  gigantic 
work,  is  the  order  and  harmony.  Then  come  a  thousand  charm- 
ing details  and  innumerable  episodes  which  form  themselves  im- 
portant compositions.  Remark  also  the  brilliant  and  sweet 
coloring  which  should  at  least  obtain  favor  for  so  many  other 
beauties  of  the  first  order.  Again,  it  is  to  the  pencil  of  Mignard 
that  we  owe  that  ravishing  ceiling  of  a  small  apartment  of  the 
King  at  Versailles,  a  master-piece  now  destroyed,  but  of  which 
there  remains  to  us  a  magnificent  translation  in  the  beautiful  en- 
graving of  Gerard  Audran.  What  profound  expression  in  the 
Plague  of  dSacus?  and  in  the  St.  Charles  giving  the  Communion 


1  In  the  Museum,  and  engraved  by  Gerard  Edelinck. 

1  La  Gloire  du  Vai-de-Gfrdce,  in  4to,  1669,  with  a  frontispiece  and  vignettes. 
Moliere  there  enters  into  infinite  details  on  all  the  parts  of  the  art  of  painting 
and  the  genius  of  Mignard.  He  pushes  eulogy  perhaps  to  the  extent  of  hy- 
perbole ;  afterwards,  hyperbole  gave  place  to  the  most  shameYul  indiiference. 
The  fresco  of  the  dome  of  Val-de -grace  is  composed  of  four  rows  of  figures, 
which  rise  in  a  circle  from  the  base  to  the  vertex  of  the  arch.  In  the  upper 
part  is  the  Trinity,  above  which  is  raised  a  resplendent  sky.  Below  the 
Trinity  are  the  celestial  powers.  Descending  a  degree,  we  see  the  Virgin 
and  the  holy  personages  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  Finally,  at  the 
lower  extremity  is  Anne  of  Austria,  introduced  into  paradise  by  St.  Anne 
and  St.  Louis,  and  these  three  figures  are  accompanied  by  a  multitude  of 
personages  pertaining  to  the  history  of  France,  among  whom  are  distin- 
guished Joan  of  Arc,  Charlemagne,  etc. 

3  Engraved  by  Gerard  Audran  under  the  name  of  the  Plague  of  David 
(la  Peste  de  -David).  What  has  become  of  the  original  ? 


FRENCH  AKT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTTJKY.   201 

to  the  Plague-infected  of  Milan !  Mignard  is  recognized  as  one 
of  our  best  portrait  painters  :  grace,  sometimes  a  little  too  refined, 
is  joined  in  him  to  sentiment.  The  French  school  can  also  pre- 
sent with  pride  Valentin,  who  died  young  and  was  so  full  of 
promise ;  Stella,  the  worthy  friend  of  Poussin,  the  uncle  of  Clau- 
dine,  Antoinette,  and  Franchise  Stella ;  Lahyre,  who  has  so  much 
spirit  and  taste  j1  Sebastien  Bourdon,  so  animated  and  elevated  ;2 
the  Lenains,  who  sometimes  have  the  naivete  of  Lesueur  and  the 
color  of  Champagne ;  Bourguignon,  full  of  fire  and  enthusiasm ; 
Jouvenet,  whose  composition  is  so  good  ;3  finally,  besides  so  many 
others,  Lebrun,  whom  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  treat  cavalierly, 
who  received  from  nature,  with  perhaps  an  immoderate  passion 
for  fame,  passion  for  the  beautiful  of  every  kind,  and  a  talent  of 
admirable  flexibility, — the  true  painter  of  a  great  king  by  the 
richness  and  dignity  of  his  manner,  who,  like  Louis  XIV., 
worthily  closes  the  seventeenth  century.4 

Since  we  have  spoken  somewhat  extensively  of  painting,  would 
it  not  be  unjust  to  pass  in  silence  over  engraving,  its  daughter, 
or  its  sister  ?  Certainly  it  is  not  an  art  of  ordinary  importance ; 
we  have  excelled  in  it ;  we  have  above  all  carried  it  to  its  per- 
fection in  portraits.  Let  us  be  equitable  to  ourselves.  What 
school — and  we  are  not  unmindful  of  those  of  Marc'  Antonio, 
Albert  Durer,  and  Rembrandt — can  present  such  a  succession  of 
artists  of  this  kind  ?  Thomas  de  Leu  and  Leonard  Gautier  make 


1  See  his  Landscape  at  Sunset,  and  the  Bathers  (les  Baigneuses),  an  agreea- 
ble scene  somewhat  blemished  by  careless  drawing. 

*  It  would  be  necessary  to  cite  all  his  compositions.  In  his  Holy  Family 
the  figure  of  the  Virgin,  without  being  celestial,  admirably  expresses  medi- 
tation and  reflection.  We  lost  some  time  ago  the  most  important  work  of 
S.  Bourdon,  the  Sept  (Euvres  de  Misericorde.  See  the  APPENDIX. 

3  See  especially  his  Extreme  Unction. 

4  The  picture  that  is  called  le  Silence,  which  represents  the  sleep  of  the  in- 
fant Jesus,  is  not  unworthy  of  Poussin.    The  head  of  the  infant  is  of  super- 
human power.    The  Battles  of  Alexander,  with  their  defects,  are  pages  of 
history  of  the  highest  order ;  and  in  the  Alexander  visiting  with  Ephestion 
the  Mother  and  the  Wife  of  Darius,  one  knows  not  which  to  admire  most,  the 
noble  ordering  of  the  whole  or  the  just  expression  of  the  figures. 

9* 


202  LECTURE  TENTH. 

in  some  sort  the  passage  from  the  sixteenth  to  the  seventeenth 
century.  Then  come  a  crowd  of  men  of  the  most  diverse  talents, 
— Mellan,  Michel  Lasne,  Morin,  Daret,  Huret,  Masson,  Nanteuil, 
Drevet,  Van  Schupen,  the  Poillys,  the  Edelincks,  and  the  Audrans. 
Gerard  Edelinck  and  Nanteuil  alone  have  a  popular  renown,  and 
they  merit  it  by  the  delicacy,  splendor,  and  charm  of  their  graver. 
But  the  connoisseurs  of  elevated  taste  find  at  least  their  rivals  in 
engravers  now  less  admired,  because  they  do  not  flatter  the  eye 
so  much,  but  have,  perhaps,  more  truth  and  vigor.  It  must  also 
be  said,  that  the  portraits  of  these  two  masters  have  not  the 
historic  importance  of  those  of  their  predecessors.  The  Conde 
of  Nanteuil  is  justly  admired ;  but  if  we  wish  to  know  the  great 
Conde,  the  conqueror  of  Rocroy  and  Lens,  we  must  not  demand 
him  from  Nanteuil,  but  from  Huret,  Michel  Lasne,  and  Daret,1 
who  designed  and  engraved  him  in  all  his  force  and  heroic 
beauty.  Edelinck  and  Nanteuil  himself  scarcely  knew  and  re- 
traced the  seventeenth  century,  except  at  the  approach  of  its 
decline.2  Morin  and  Mellan  were  able  to  see  it,  and  transmit  it 
in  its  glorious  youth.  Morin  is  the  Champagne  of  engraving : 
he  does  not  engrave,  he  paints.  It  is  he  who  represents  and 
transmits  to  posterity  the  illustrious  men  of  the  first  half  of  the 
great  century — Henry  IV.,  Louis  XIII.,  the  de  Thous,  Berulle, 
Jansenius,  Saint-Cyran,  Marillac,  Bentivoglio,  Richelieu,  Mazarin, 


1  It  seems  that  Lesueur  sometimes  furnished  Daret  with  designs.    It  is 
indeed  to  Lesueur  that  Daret  owes  the  idea  and  the  design  of  his  chef- 
d'oeuvre,  the  portrait  of  Armand  de  Bourbon,  prince  de  Conti,  represented  in 
his  earliest  youth,  and  in  an  abbe,  sustained  and  surrounded  by  angels  of 
different  size,  forming  a  charming  composition.    The  drawing  is  completely 
pure,  except  some  imperfect  fore-shortenings.    The  little  angels  that  sport 
with  the  emblems  of  the  future  cardinal  are  full  of  spirit,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  sweetness. 

2  Edelinck  saw  only  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.     Nanteuil  was  able  to  en- 
grave very  few  of  the  great  men  of  the  time  of  Louis  XIII.,  and  the  regency, 
and  in  the  latter  part  of  their  life ;  Mazarin,  in  his  last  five  or  six  years ; 
Conde',  growing  old ;  Turenne,  old ;  Fouquet  and  Matthieu  Mole,  some  years 
before  the  fall  of  the  one  and  the  death  of  the  other ;  and  he  was  too  often 
obliged  to  waste  his  talent  upon  a  crowd  of  parliamentarians,  ecclesiastics, 
and  obscure  financiers. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    203 

still  young,  and  Retz,  when  he  was  only  a  coadjutor.1  Mellan 
had  the  same  advantage.  He  is  the  first  in  date  of  all  the  en- 
gravers of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  perhaps  is  also  the  most 
expressive.  With  a  single  line,  it  seems  that  from  his  hands 
only  shades  can  spring ;  he  does  not  strike  at  first  sight ;  but  the 
more  we  regard  him,  the  more  he  seizes,  penetrates,  and  touches, 
like  Lesueur.5 

Christianity,  that  is  to  say,  the  reign  of  the  spirit,  is  favorable 
to  painting,  is  particularly  expressive.  Sculpture  seems  to  be  a 
pagan  art ;  for,  if  it  must  also  contain  moral  expression,  it  is  al- 
ways under  the  imperative  condition  of  beauty  of  form.  This  is 
the  reason  why  sculpture  is  as  it  were  natural  to  antiquity,  and 
appeared  there  with  an  incomparable  splendor,  before  which 
painting  somewhat  paled,*  whilst  among  the  moderns  it  has  been 
eclipsed  by  painting,  and  has  remained  very  inferior  to  it,  by 
reason  of  the  extreme  difficulty  of  bringing  stone  and  marble  to 
express  Christian  sentiment,  without  which,  material  beauty  suf- 
fers ;  so  that  our  sculpture  is  too  insignificant  to  be  beautiful, 
too  mannered  to  be  expressive.  Since  antiquity,  there  have 
scarcely  been  two  schools  of  sculpture  :4 — one  at  Florence,  before 
Michael  Angelo,  and  especially  with  Michael  Angelo ;  the  other 

1  If  I  wished  to  make  any  one  acquainted  with  the  greatest  and  most  neg- 
lected portion  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that  which  Voltaire  almost  wholly 
omitted,  I  would  set  him  to  collecting  the  works  of  Morin. 

2  Mellan  not  only  made  portraits  after  the  celebrated  painters  of  his 
time,  he  is  himself  the  author  of  great  and  charming  compositions,  many  of 
which  serve  as  frontispieces  to  books.    I  willingly  call  attention  to  that  one 
which  is  at  the  head  of  a  folio  edition  of  the  Introduction  a  la  Vie  Devote,  and 
to  the  beautiful  frontispieces  of  the  writings  of  Kichelieu,  from  the  press  of 
the  Louvre. 

3  This  was  the  opinion  of  Winkelmann  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury ;  it  is  our  opinion  now,  even  after  all  the  discoveries  that  have  been 
made  during  fifty  years,  that  may  be  seen  in  great  part  retraced  and  described 
in  the  Musio  real  Barbonico. 

4  There  was  doubtless  sculpture  in  the  middle  age :  the  innumerable  fig- 
ures at  the  portals  of  our  cathedrals,  and  the  statues  that  are  discovered 
every  day  sufficiently  testify  it.     The  imagers  of  that  time  certainly  had 
much  spirit  and  imagination ;  but,  at  least  in  every  thing  that  we  have  seen, 
beauty  is  absent,  and  taste  wanting. 


204:  LECTURE   TENTH. 

in  France,  at  the  Renaissance,  with  Jean  Cousin,  Goujon,  Ger- 
main Pilon.  We  may  say  that  these  three  artists  have,  as  it 
were,  shared  among  themselves  grandeur  and  grace :  to  the  first 
belong  nobility  and  force,  with  profound  knowledge;1  to  the 
other  two,  an  elegance  full  of  charm.  Sculpture  changes  its 
character  in  the  seventeenth  century  as  well  as  every  thing  else : 
it  no  longer  has  the  same  attraction,  but  it  finds  moral  and  reli- 
gious inspiration,  which  the  skilful  masters  of  the  Renaissance 
too  much  lacked.  Jean  Cousin  excepted,  is  there  one  of  them 
that  is  superior  to  Jacques  Sarazin  ?  That  great  artist,  now  al- 
most forgotten,  is  at  once  a  disciple  of  the  French  school  and 
the  Italian  school,  and  to  the  qualities  that  he  borrows  from  his 
predecessors,  he  adds  a  moral  expression,  touching  and  elevated, 
which  he  owes  to  the  spirit  of  the  new  school.  He  is,  in  sculp- 
ture, the  worthy  contemporary  of  Lesueur  and  Poussin,  of  Cor- 
neille,  Descartes,  and  Pascal.  He  belongs  entirely  to  the  reign 
of  Louis  XIII.,  Richelieu,  and  Mazarin ;  he  did  not  even  see  that 
of  Louis  XIV.4  Called  into  France  by  Richelieu,  who  had  also 
called  there  Poussin  and  Champagne,  Jacques  Sarazin  in  a  few 
years  produced  a  multitude  of  works  of  rare  elegance  and  great 
character.  What  has  become  of  them  ?  The  eighteenth  century 
passed  over  them  without  regarding  them.  The  barbarians  that 
destroyed  or  scattered  them,  were  arrested  before  the  paintings 
of  Lesueur  and  Poussin,  protected  by  a  remnant  of  admiration : 
while  breaking  the  master-pieces  of  the  French  chisel,  they  had 
no  suspicion  of  the  sacrilege  they  were  committing  against  art  as 
well  as  their  country.  I  was  at  least  able  to  see,  some  years 
ago,  at  the  Museum  of  French  Monuments,  collected  by  the 
piety  of  a  friend  of  the  arts,  beautiful  parts  of  a  superb  mauso- 

1  Go  and  see  at  the  Museum  of  Versailles  the  statue  of  Francis  I.,  and  say 
whether  any  Italian,  except  the  author  of  the  Laurent  de  Medicis,  has  made 
any  thing  like  it.  See  also  in  the  Museum  of  the  Louvre,  the  statue  of  Ad- 
miral Chabot. 

a  Sarazin  died  in  1660,  Lesueur  in  1655,  Poussin  in  1665,  Descartes  in 
1650,  Pascal  in  1662,  and  the  genius  of  Corneille  did  not  extend  beyond  that 
epoch. 


FRENCH  AKT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUBY.   205 

leum  erected  to  the  memory  of  Henri  de  Bourbon,  second  of  the 
name,  Prince  of  Conde,  father  of  the  great  Conde,  the  worthy 
support,  the  skilful  fellow-laborer  of  Richelieu  and  Mazarin. 
This  monument  was  supported  by  four  figures  of  natural  gran- 
deur,— faith,  Prudence,  Justice,  Charity.  There  were  four  bas- 
reliefs  in  bronze,  representing  the  Triumphs  of  Renown,  Time, 
Death,  and  Eternity.  In  the  Triumph  of  Death,  the  artist  had 
represented  a  certain  number  of  illustrious  moderns,  among 
whom  he  had  placed  himself  by  the  side  of  Michael  Angelo.1 
We  can  still  contemplate  in  the  court  of  the  Louvre,  in  the  pa- 
vilion of  the  Horloge,  those  caryatides  of  Sarazin  at  once  so  ma- 
jestic and  so  graceful,  which  are  detached  with  admirable  relief 
and  lightness.  Have  Jean  Goujon  and  Germain  Pilon  done  any 
thing  more  elegant  and  lifelike  ?  Those  females  breathe,  and  are 
about  to  move.  Take  the  pains  to  go  a  short  distance2  to  visit 
the  humble  chapel  that  now  occupies  the  place  of  that  magnifi- 
cent church  of  the  Carmelites,  once  filled  with  the  paintings  of 
Champagne,  Stella,  Lahire,  and  Lebrun ;  where  the  voice  of 
Bossuet  was  heard,  where  Mile,  de  Lavalliere  and  Mme.  de  Lon- 
gueville  were  so  often  seen  prostrated,  their  long  hair  shorn,  and 
their  faces  bathed  in  tears.  Among  the  relics  that  are  preserved 
of  the  past  splendor  of  the  holy  monastery,  consider  the  noble 
statue  of  the  kneeling  Cardinal  de  Berulle.  On  those  meditative 
and  penetrating  features,  in  those  eyes  raised  to  heaven,  breathes 
the  soul  of  that  great  servant  of  God,  who  died  at  the  altar  like 
a  warrior  on  the  field  of  honor.  He  prays  God  for  his  dear 

1  Lenoir,  Musee  des  Monuments  Frantais,  vol.  v.,  p.  87-91,  and  the  Musee 
Royale  dee  Monuments  Fran^ais  of  1815,  p.  98,  99,  108,  122,  and  140.    This 
wonderful  monument,  erected  to  Henri  de  Bourbon,  at  the  expense  of  his 
old  intendant  Perrault,  president  of  the  Chambre  des  Comptes,  was  placed  in 
the  Church  of  the  Jesuits,  and  was  wholly  in  hronze.    It  must  not  be  con- 
founded with  the  other  monument  that  the  Conde's  erected  to  the  same 
prince  in  their  family  burial-ground  at  Vallery,  near  Montereau,  in  Yonne. 
This  monument  is  in  marble,  and  by  the  hand  of  Michel  Anguier ;  see  the 
description  in  Lenoir,  vol.  v.,  p.  23-25,  and  especially  in  the  Annuaire  de 
V  Yonne  povr  1842,  p.  175,  etc. 

2  Rue  d'Enfer,  No.  67. 


206  LECTURE   TENTH. 

Carmelites.  That  head  is  perfectly  natural,  as  Champagne 
might  have  painted  it,  and  has  a  severe  grace  that  reminds  one 
of  Lesueur  and  Poussin.1 

Below  Sarazin,  the  Anguiers  are  still  artists  that  Italy  would 
admire,  and  to  whom  there  is  wanting,  since  the  great  century, 
nothing  but  judges  worthy  of  them.  These  two  brothers  covered 
Paris  and  France  with  the  most  precious  monuments.  Look  at 
the  tomb  of  Jacques- Auguste  de  Thou,  by  Francois  Anguier : 
the  face  of  the  great  historian  is  reflective  and  melancholy,  like 
that  of  a  man  weary  of  the  spectacle  of  human  things ;  and 
nothing  is  more  amiable  than  the  statues  of  his  two  wives,  Marie 
Barbanc,on  de  Cany,  and  Gasparde  de  la  Chatre.4  The  mauso- 
leum of  Henri  de  Montmorency,  beheaded  at  Toulouse  in  1632, 
which  is  still  seen  at  Moulins,  in  the  church  of  the  ancient  con- 
vent of  the  daughters  of  Sainte-Marie,  is  an  important  work  of 
the  same  artist,  in  which  force  is  manifest,  with  a  little  heaviness.3 
To  Michel  Anguier  are  attributed  the  statues  of  the  duke  and 
duchess  of  Tresmes,  and  that  of  their  illustrious  son,  Potier,  Mar- 
quis of  Gevres.4  Behold  in  him  the  intrepid  companion  of  Conde, 


1  The  Museum  of  the  Louvre  possesses  only  a  very  small  number  of  Sara- 
zin's  works,  and  those  of  very  little  importance : — a  bust  of  Pierre  Seguier, 
strikingly  true,  two  statuettes  full  of  grace,  and  the  small  funeral  monument 
of  Hennequin,  Abb^  of  Bernay,  member  of  Parliament,  who  died  in  1651, 
which  is  a  chef-d'oeuvre  of  elegance. 

3  These  three  statues  were  united  in  the  Museum  des  Petits-Augustint, 
Lenoir,  Musee-royal,  etc.,  p.  94 ;  we  know  not  why  they  have  been  separated ; 
Jacques- Auguste  de  Thou  has  been  placed  in  the  Louvre,  and  his  two  wives 
at  Versailles. 

1  Francois  Anguier  had  made  a  marble  tomb  of  Cardinal  de  Berulle,  which 
was  in  the  oratory  of  Rue  St.  Honore.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to 
compare  this  statue  with  that  of  Sarazin,  which  is  still  at  the  Carmelites. 
Franqois  is  also  the  author  of  the  monument  of  the  Longuevilles,  which, 
before  the  Eevolution,  was  at  the  Celestins,  and  was  seen  in  1815  at  the 
museum  des  Petit- Augustins,  Lenoir,  ibid.,  p.  103 ;  it  is  now  in  the  Louvre. 
It  is  an  obelisk,  the  four  sides  of  which  are  covered  with  allegorical  bas- 
reliefs.  The  pedestal,  also  ornamented  with  bas-reliefs,  has  four  female  figures 
in  marble,  representing  the  cardinal  virtues. 

4  Now  at  Versailles.    Lenoir,  p.  97  and  100.    See  his  portrait,  painted  by 
Champagne,  and  engraved  by  Morin. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    20Y 

arrested  in  his  course  at  thirty-two  years  of  age  before  Thionville, 
after  the  battle  of  Rocroy,  already  lieutenant-general,  and  when 
Conde  was  demanding  for  him  the  baton  of  a  marshal  of  France, 
deposited  on  his  tomb ;  behold  him  young,  beautiful,  brave,  like 
his  comrades  cut  down  also  in  the  flower  of  life,  Laval,  Chatillon, 
La  Moussaye.  One  of  the  best  works  of  Michel  Anguier  is  the 
monument  of  Henri  de  Chabot,  that  other  companion,  that  faithful 
friend  of  Conde,  who  by  the  splendor  of  his  valor,  especially  by 
the  graces  of  his  person,  knew  how  to  gain  the  heart,  the  fortune, 
and  the  name  of  the  beautiful  Marguerite,  the  daughter  of  the 
great  Duke  of  Rohan.  The  new  duke  died,  still  young,  in  1655, 
at  thirty-nine  years  of  age.  He  is  represented  lying  down,  the 
head  inclined  and  supported  by  an  angel ;  another  angel  is  at  his 
feet.  The  whole  is  striking,  and  the  details  are  exquisite.  The 
face  of  Chabot  has  every  beauty,  as  if  to  answer  to  its  reputation, 
but  the  beauty  is  that  of  one  dying.  The  body  has  already  the 
languor  of  death,  longuescit  moriens,  with  I  know  not  what  an- 
tique grace.  This  morsel,  if  the  drawing  were  more  severe,  would 
rival  the  Dying  Gladiator,  of  which  it  reminds  one,  which  it  per- 
haps even  imitates.1 

In  truth,  I  wonder  that  men  now  dare  speak  so  lightly  of  Puget 
and  Girardon.  To  Puget  qualities  of  the  first  order  cannot  be 
refused.  He  has  the  fire,  the  enthusiasm,  the  fecundity  of  genius. 
The  caryatides  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  of  Toulon,  which  have  been 
brought  to  the  Museum  of  Paris,  attest  a  powerful  chisel.  The 
Milon  reminds  one  of  the  manner  of  Michael  Angelo ;  it  is  a  little 
overstrained,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  effect  is  striking. 


1  Group  in  white  marble  which  was  at  the  Celestins,  a  church  near  the 
hotel  of  Eohan-Chabot  in  the  Place  Boyale  ;  re-collected  in  the  Museum  des 
Petits-Augrtistins,  Lenoir,  ibid.,  p.  97  ;  it  is  now  at  Versailles.  "We  must  not 
pass  over  that  beautiful  production,  the  mausoleum  of  Jacques  de  Souvre, 
Grand  Prior  of  France,  the  brother  of  the  beautiful  Marchioness  de  Sable ; 
a  mausoleum  that  came  from  Saint-Jean  de  Latran,  passed  through  the  Mu- 
seum des  Petits-Augustlns,  and  is  now  found  in  the  Louvre.  The  sculptures 
of  the  porte  Saint-Denis  are  also  owed  to  Michel  Anguier,  as  well  as  the 
admirable  bust  of  Colbert,  which  is  in  the  museum. 


208  LECTURE  TENTH. 

Do  you  want  a  talent  more  natural,  and  still  having  force  and 
elevation  ?  Take  the  trouble  to  search  in  the  Tuileries,  in  the 
gardens  of  Versailles,  in  several  churches  of  Paris,  for  the  scatter- 
ed works  of  Girardon,  here  for  the  mausoleum  of  the  Gondis,1 
there  for  that  of  the  Castellans,1  that  of  Louvois,3  etc. ;  especially 
go  to  see  in  the  church  of  the  Sorbonne  the  mausoleum  of  Riche- 
lieu. The  formidable  minister  is  there  represented  in  his  last 
moments,  sustained  by  religion  and  wept  by  his  country.  The 
whole  person  is  of  a  perfect  nobility,  and  the  figure  has  the  fineness, 
the  severity,  the  superior  distinction  given  to  it  by  the  pencil  of 
Champagne,  and  the  gravers  of  Morin,  Michel  Lasne,  and  Mellan. 
Finally,  I  do  not  regard  as  a  vulgar  sculptor  Coysevox,  who, 
under  the  influence  of  Lebrun,  unfortunately  begins  the  theatrical 
style,  who  still  has  the  facility,  movement,  and  elegance  of  Lebrun 
himself.  He  reared  worthy  monuments  to  Mazarin,  Colbert,  and 
Lebrun,4  and  thus  to  speak,  sowed  busts  of  the  illustrious  men  of 
his  time.  For,  remark  it  well,  artists  then  took  scarcely  any 
arbitrary  and  fanciful  subjects.  They  worked  upon  contempora- 
neous subjects,  which,  while  giving  them  proper  liberty,  inspired 
and  guided  them,  and  communicated  a  public  interest  to  their 
works.  The  French  sculpture  of  the  seventeenth  century,  like 
that  of  antiquity,  is  profoundly  natural.  The  churches  and  the 
monasteries  were  filled  with  the  statues  of  those  who  loved  them 
during  life,  and  wished  to  rest  in  them  after  death.  Each  church 
of  Paris  was  a  popular  museum.  The  sumptuous  residences  of 
the  aristocracy — for  at  that  period,  there  was  one  in  France,  like 


1  At  first  at  Notre-Dame,  the  natural  place  for  the  tombs  of  the  Gondis, 
then  at  the  Augustins,  now  at  Versailles. 

2  In  the  Church  St.  Germain  des  Pres. 

J  At  the  Capuchins,  then  at  the  Augustins,  then  at  Versailles. 

4  See,  on  these  monuments,  Lenoir,  p.  98,  101,  102.  That  of  Mazarin  is 
now  at  the  Louvre ;  that  of  Colbert  has  been  restored  to  the  Church  of  St. 
Eustache,  and  that  of  Lebrun  to  the  Church  St.  Nicholas  du  Chardonnet,  as 
well  as  the  mausoleum,  so  expressive  but  a  little  overstrained,  of  the  mother 
of  Lebrun,  by  Tuby,  and  the  mausoleum  of  Jerome  Bignon,  the  celebrated 
Councillor  of  State,  who  died  in  1656. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

that  of  England  at  the  present  time — possessed  their  secular 
tombs,  statues,  busts,  and  portraits  of  eminent  men  whose  glory 
belonged  to  the  country  as  well  as  their  own  family.  On  its  side, 
the  state  did  not  encourage  the  arts  in  detail,  and,  thus  to  speak, 
in  a  small  way ;  it  gave  them  a  powerful  impulse  by  demanding 
of  them  important  works,  by  confiding  to  them  vast  enterprises. 
All  great  things  were  thus  mingled  together,  reciprocally  inspired 
and  sustained  each  other. 

One  man  alone  in-  Europe  has  left  a  name  in  the  beautiful  art 
that  surrounds  a  chateau  or  a  palace  with  graceful  gardens  or 
magnificent  parks, — that  man  is  a  Frenchman  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  is  Le  Notre.  Le  Notre  may  be  reproached  with  a  regu- 
larity that  is  perhaps  excessive,  and  a  little  mannerism  in  details  ; 
but  he  has  two  qualities  that  compensate  for  many  defects,  gran- 
deur and  sentiment.  He  who  designed  the  park  of  Versailles, 
who  to  the  proper  arrangement  of  parterres,  to  the  movement  of 
fountains,  to  the  harmonious  sound  of  waterfalls,  to  the  mysteri- 
ous shades  of  groves,  has  known  how  to  add  the  magic  of  infinite 
perspective  by  means  of  that  spacious  walk  where  the  view  is 
extended  over  an  immense  sheet  of  water  to  be  lost  in  the  limit- 
less distances, — he  is  a  landscape-painter  worthy  of  having  a  place 
by  the  side  of  Poussin  and  Lorrain. 

We  had  in  the  middle  age  our  Gothic  architecture,  like  all  the 
nations  of  northern  Europe.  In  the  sixteenth  century  what  archi- 
tects were  Pierre  Lescot,  Jean  Bullant,  and  Philibert  Delorme ! 
What  charming  palaces,  what  graceful  edifices,  the  Tuileries,  the 
Hotel  de  Ville  of  Paris,  Chambord,  and  Ecou«n  !  The  seventeenth 
century  also  had  its  original  architecture,  different  from  that  of 
the  middle  age  and  that  of  the  Renaissance,  simple,  austere,  noble, 
like  the  poetry  of  Coraeille  and  the  prose  of  Descartes.  Study 
without  scholastic  prejudice  the  Luxembourg  of  de  Brosses,1  the 


1  Quatremere  de  Quincy,  Histoire  de  la  Vie  et  des  Outrages  de  plus  Cetebret 
Architects,  vol.  ii.,  p.  145  : — "  There  could  scarcely  be  found  in  any  country 
an  ensemble  so  grand,  which  offiess  with  so  much  unity  and  regularity  aa 
aspect  at  once  more  varied  and  picturesque,  especially  in  the  fa<jado  of  th> 


210  LECTURE    TENTH. 

portal  of  Saint-Gervais,  and  the  great  hall  of  the  Palais  de  Jus- 
tice, by  the  same  architect ;  the  Palais  Cardinal  and  the  Sorbonne 
of  Lemercier ;!  the  cupola  of  Val-de-Grace  by  Lemuet  f  the  tri- 
umphal arch  of  the  Porte  Saint-Denis  by  Francois  Blondel ;  Ver- 
sailles, and  especially  the  Invalides,  of  Mansart.3  Consider  with 
attention  the  la*st  edifice,  let  it  make  its  impression  on  your  mind 
and  soul,  and  you  will  easily  succeed  in  recognizing  in  it  a  par- 
ticular beauty.  It  is  not  a  Gothic  monument,  neither  is  it  an 
almost  Pagan  monument  of  the  sixteenth  century, — it  is  modern, 
and  also  Christian ;  it  is  vast  with  measure,  elegant  with  gravity. 
Contemplate  at  sunset  that  cupola  reflecting  the  last  rays  of  day, 
elevating  itself  gently  towards  the  heavens  in  a  slight  and  grace- 
ful curve ;  cross  that  imposing  esplanade,  enter  that  court  admi- 
rably lighted  in  spite  of  its  covered  galleries,  bow  beneath  the 
dome  of  that  church  where  Vauban  and  Turenne  sleep, — you 
will  not  be  able  to  guard  yourself  from  an  emotion  at  once  reli- 
gious and  military ;  you  will  say  to  yourself  that  this  is  indeed 
the  asylum  of  warriors  who  have  reached  the  evening  of  life  and 
are  prepared  for  eternity ! 

Since  then,  what  has  French  architecture  become  ?  Once  hav- 
ing left  tradition  and  national  character,  it  wanders  from  imitation 
to  imitation,  and  without  comprehending  the  genius  of  antiquity, 
it  unskilfully  reproduces  its  forms.  This  bastard  architecture,  at 
once  heavy  and  mannered,  is,  little  by  little,  substituted  for  the 
beautiful  architecture  of  the  preceding  century,  and  everywhere 

entrance."  Unfortunately  this  unity  has  disappeared,  thanks  to  the  con- 
structions that  have  since  been  added  to  the  primitive  work. 

1  In  order  to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  Sorbonne,  one  must  stand  in  the 
lower  part  of  the  great  court,  and  from  that  point  consider  the  effect  of  the 
successive  elevation,  at  first  of  the  other  part  of  the  court,  then  of  the  differ- 
ent stories  of  the  portico,  then  of  the  portico  itself,  of  the  church,  and,  finally, 
of  the  dome. 

a  Quatremere  de  Quincy,  Ibid.,  p.  257  : — "  The  cupola  of  this  edifice  is  one 
of  the  finest  in  Europe." 

3  We  do  not  speak  of  the  colonnade  of  the  Louvre  by  Perrault,  because, 
in  spite  of  its  grand  qualities,  it  begins,  the  decline  and  marks  the  passage 
from  the  serious  to  the  academic  style,  from  originality  to  imitation,  from  the 
•seventeenth  century  to  the  eighteenth. 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THK  SKVKNTKKNTH  CENTURY.    211 

effaces  the  vestiges  of  the  French  spirit.  Do  you  wish  a  striking 
example  of  it  ?  In  Paris,  near  the  Luxembourg,  the  Condes  had 
their  hdtel,1  magnificent  and  severe,  with  a  military  aspect,  as  it 
was  fitting  for  the  dwelling-place  of  a  family  of  warriors,  and 
within  of  almost  royal  splendor.  Beneath  those  lofty  ceilings  had 
been  some  time  suspended  the  Spanish  flags  taken  at  Rocroy.  In 
those  vast  saloons  had  been  assembled  the  elite  of  the  grandest 
society  that  ever  existed.  In  those  beautiful  gardens  had  been 
seen  promenading  Corneille  and  Madame  de  Sevigne,  Moliere, 
Bossuet,  Boileau,  Racine,  in  the  company  of  the  great  Conde. 
The  oratory  had  been  painted  by  the  hand  of  Lesueur.2  It  had 
been  easy  to  repair  and  preserve  the  noble  habitation.  At  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  descendant  of  the  Condes  sold 
it  to  a  dismal  company  to  build  that  palace  without  character 
and  taste  which  is  called  the  Palais-Bourbon.  Almost  at  the 
same  epoch  there  was  a  movement  made  to  construct  a  church  to 
the  patroness  of  Paris,  to  that  Genevieve,  whose  legend  is  so 
touching  and  so  popular.  Was  there  ever  a  better  chance  for  a 
national  and  Christian  monument  ?  It  was  possible  to  return  to 
the  Gothic  style  and  even  to  the  Byzantine  style.  Instead  of 
that  there  was  made  for  us  an  immense  Roman  basilica  of  the 
Decline.  What  a  dwelling  for  the  modest  and  holy  virgin,  so 
dear  to  the  fields  that  bordered  upon  Lutece,  whose  name  is  still 
renerated  by  the  poor  people  who  inhabit  these  quarters !  Be- 
hold the  church  which  has  been  placed  by  the  side  of  that  of 
Saint-Etienne  du  Mont,  as  if  to  make  felt  all  the  differences 
between  Christianity  and  Paganism !  For  here,  in  spite  of  a 


1  See  the  engraving  of  Perelle.  Sauval,  vol.  ii.,  p.  66  and  p.  181,  says  that 
the  Tiotel  of  Cond6  was  magnificently  built,  that  it  was  the  most  magnificent  q/ 
the  time. 

a  Notice  of  Guillet  de  St.  Georges,  recently  published  (see  the  APPENDIX)  : 
— "  Nearly  at  the  same  time  the  Princess-dowager  de  Conde,  Charlotte-Mar- 
guerite de  Montmorency,  mother  of  the  late  prince,  had  an  oratory  painted 
by  Lesueur  in  the  hotel  of  Conde.  The  altar-piece  represents  a  Nativity, 
that  of  the  ceiling  a  Celestial  Glory.  The  wainscot  is  enriched  with  several 
figures  and  with  a  quantity  of  ornaments  worked  with  great  care." 


212  LECTURE   TENTH. 

mixture  of  the  most  different  styles,  it  is  evident  that  the  Pagan 
style  predominates.  Christian  worship  cannot  be  naturalized  in 
this  profane  edifice,  which  has  so  many  times  changed  its  desti- 
nation. It  is  in  vain  to  call  it  anew  Saint-Genevieve, — the  revo- 
lutionary name  of  Pantheon  will  stick  to  it.1  The  eighteenth 
century  treated  the  Madeleine  no  better  than  Saint-Genevieve. 
In  vain  the  beautiful  sinner  wished  to  renounce  the  joys  of  the 
world  and  attach  herself  to  the  poverty  of  Jesus  Christ.  She  has 
been  brought  back  to  the  pomp  and  luxury  that  she  repudiated ; 
she  has  been  put  in  a  rich  palace,  all  shining  with  gold,  which 
might  very  well  be  a  temple  of  Venus,  for  certainly  it  has  not  the 
severe  grace  of  the  Pantheon,  of  which  it  is  the  most  vulgar  copy. 
How  far  we  are  from  the  Invalides,  from  Val-de-Grace,  and  the 
Sorbonne,  so  admirably  appropriated  to  their  object,  wherein  ap- 
pears so  well  the  hand  of  the  century  and  the  country  which 
reared  them ! 

While  architecture  thus  strays,  it  is  natural  that  painting 
should  seek  above  every  thing  color  and  brilliancy,  that  sculp- 
ture should  apply  itself  to  become  Pagan  again,  that  poetry 
itself,  receding  for  two  centuries,  should  abjure  the  worship  of 
thought  for  that  of  fancy,  that  it  should  everywhere  go  borrow- 
ing images  from  Spain,  Italy,  and  Germany,  that  it  should  run 
after  subaltern  and  foreign  qualities  which  it  will  not  attain,  and 
abandon  the  grand  qualities  of  the  French  genius. 

It  will  be  said  that  the  Christian  sentiment  which  animated 
Lesueur  and  the  artists  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  wanting  to 
those  of  ours ;  it  is  extinguished,  and  cannot  be  rekindled.  In 
the  first  place,  is  that  very  certain  ?  Native  faith  is  dead,  but 
cannot  reflective  faith  take  its  place  ?  Christianity  is  exhaustless ; 
it  has  infinite  resources,  and  admirable  flexibility ;  there  are  a 

1  The  Pantheon  is  an  imitation  of  the  St.  Paul's  of  London,  which  is  itself 
a  very  sad  imitation  of  St.  Peter's  of  Rome.  The  only  merit  of  the  Pantheon 
is  its  situation  on  the  summit  of  the  hill  of  St.  Genevieve,  from  which  it 
overlooks  that  part  of  the  town,  and  is  seen  on  different  sides  to  a  considera- 
ble distance.  Put  in  its  place  the  Val-de-Grace  of  Lemercier  with  the  dome 
of  Lemuet,  and  judge  what  would  be  the  effect  of  such  an  edifice ! 


FRENCH  ART  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.    213 

thousand  ways  of  arriving  at  it  and  returning  to  it,  because  it 
has  itself  a  thousand  phases  that  answer  to  the  most  different 
dispositions,  to  all  the  wants,  to  all  the  mobility  of  the  heart. 
What  it  loses  on  one  side,  it  gains  on  another  ;  and  as  it  has  pro- 
duced our  civilization,  it  is  called  to  follow  it  in  all  its  vicissitudes. 
Either  every  religion  will  perish  in  this  world,  or  Christianity 
will  endure,  for  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  thought  to  conceive  a 
more  perfect  religion.  Artists  of  the  nineteenth  century,  do  not 
despair  of  God  and  yourselves.  A  superficial  philosophy  has 
thrown  you  far  from  Christianity  considered  in  a  strict  sense ; 
another  philosophy  can  bring  you  noar  it  again  by  making  you 
see  it  with  another  eye.  And  then,  if  the  religious  sentiment  is 
weakened,  are  there  not  other  sentiments  that  can  make  the 
heart  of  man  beat,  and  fecundate  genius  ?  Plato  has  said,  that 
beauty  is  always  old  and  always  new.  It  is  superior  to  all  its 
forms,  it  belongs  to  all  countries  and  all  times ;  it  belongs  to  all 
beliefs,  provided  these  beliefs  be  serious  and  profound,  and  the 
need  be  felt  of  expressing  and  spreading  them.  If,  then,  we 
have  not  arrived  at  the  boundary  assigned  to  the  grandeur  of 
France,  if  we  are  not  beginning  to  descend  into  the  shade  of 
death,  if  we  still  truly  live,  if  there  remain  to  us  convictions,  of 
whatever  kind  they  may  be,  thereby  even  remains  to  us,  or  at 
least  may  remain  to  us,  what  made  the  glory  of  our  fathers, 
what  they  did  not  carry  with  them  to  the  tomb,  what  had  al- 
ready survived  all  revolutions,  Greece,  Rome,  the  Middle  Age, 
what  does  not  belong  to  any  temporary  or  ephemeral  accident, 
what  subsists  and  is  continually  found  in  the  focus  of  conscious- 
ness— I  mean  moral  inspiration,  immortal  as  the  soul. 

Let  us  terminate  here,  and  sum  up  this  defence  of  the  national 
art.  There  are  in  arts,  as  well  as  in  letters  and  philosophy,  two 
contrary  schools.  One  tends  to  the  ideal  in  all  things, — it  seeks, 
it  tries  to  make  appear  the  spirit  concealed  under  the  form,  at 
once  manifested  and  veiled  by  nature  ;  it  does  not  so  much  wish 
to  please  the  senses  and  flatter  the  imagination  as  to  enlarge  the 
intellect  and  move  the  soul.  The  other,  enamored  of  nature, 


214  LECTUKE   TENTH. 

stops  there  and  devotes  itself  to  imitation, — its  principal  object 
is  to  reproduce  reality,  movement,  life,  which  are  for  it  the  su- 
preme beauty.  The  France  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
France  of  Descartes,  Corneille,  and  Bossuet,  highly  spiritual  in 
philosophy,  poetry,  and  eloquence,  was  also  highly  spiritual  in 
the  arts.  The  artists  of  that  great  epoch  participate  in  its  gen- 
eral character,  and  represent  it  in  their  way.  It  is  not  true  that 
they  lacked  imagination,  more  than  Pascal  and  Bossuet  lacked 
it.  But  inasmuch  as  they  do  not  suffer  imagination  to  usurp 
the  dominion  that  does  not  belong  to  it,  inasmuch  as  they  sub- 
ject its  order,  even  its  impetuosity,  to  the  reign  of  reason  and 
the  inspirations  of  the  heart,  it  seems  that  it  is  not  so  strong 
when  it  is  only  disciplined  and  regulated.  As  we  have  said, 
they  excel  in  composition,  especially  in  expression.  They  always 
have  a  thought,  and  a  moral  and  elevated  thought.  For  this 
reason  they  are  dear  to  us,  their  cause  interests  us,  is  in  some 
sort  our  own  cause,  and  so  this  homage  rendered  to  their  mis- 
understood glory  naturally  crowns  these  lectures  devoted  to  true 
beauty,  that  is  to  say,  moral  beauty. 

May  these  lectures  be  able  to  make  it  known,  and,  above  all, 
loved  !  May  they  be  able  also  to  inspire  some  one  of  you  with 
the  idea  of  devoting  himself  to  studies  so  beautiful,  of  devoting 
to  them  his  life,  and  attaching  to  them  his  name !  The  sweetest 
recompense  of  a  professor  who  is  not  too  unworthy  of  that  title, 
is  to  see  rapidly  following  in  his  footsteps  young  and  noble 
spirits  who  easily  pass  him  and  leave  him  far  behind  them.1 

1  In  the  first  rank  of  the  intelligent  auditors  of  this  course  was  M.  Jouf- 
froy,  who  already  under  our  auspices,  had  presented  to  ihefacultedes  lettres, 
in  order  to  obtain  the  degree  of  doctor,  a  thesis  on  the  beautiful.  M.  Jouf- 
froy  had  cultivated,  with  care  and  particular  taste,  the  seeds  that  our  teach- 
ing might  have  planted  in  his  mind.  But  of  all  those  who  at  that  epoch  or 
later  frequented  our  lectures,  no  one  was  better  fitted  to  embrace  the  entire 
domain  of  beauty  or  art  than  the  author  of  the  beautiful  articles  on  Eus- 
tache  Lesueur,  the  Cathedral  of  Noyon,  and  the  Louvre.  M.  Vitet  possesses 
all  the  knowledge,  and,  what  is  more,  all  the  qualities  requisite  for  a  judge 
of  every  kind  of  beauty,  for  a  worthy  historian  of  art.  I  yield  to  the  neces- 
sity of  addressing  to  him  the  public  petition  that  he  may  not  be  wanting  to 
a  vocation  so  marked  and  so  elevated. 


PART     THIRD. 


THE  GOOD. 
LECTUEE    XI. 

PRIMARY   NOTIONS   OF  COMMON   SENSE. 

Extent  of  the  question  of  the  good. — Position  of  the  question  according  to 
the  psychological  method:  What  is,  in  regard  to  the  good,  the  natural 
belief  of  mankind  ? — The  natural  beliefs  of  humanity  must  not  be  sought 
in  a  pretended  state  of  nature. — Study  of  the  sentiments  and  ideas  of  men 
in  languages,  in  life,  in  consciousness. — Disinterestedness  and  devoted- 
ness. — Liberty. — Esteem  and  contempt. — Eespect. — Admiration  and  indig- 
nation.— Dignity. — Empire  of  opinion. — Eidicule. — Eegret  and  repent- 
ance.— Natural  and  necessary  foundations  of  all  justice. — Distinction  be- 
tween fact  and  right. — Common  sense,  true  and  false  philosophy. 

THE  idea  of  the  true  in  its  developments,  comprises  psychology, ' 
logic,  and  metaphysics.  The  idea  of  the  beautiful  begets  what 
is  called  aesthetics.  The  idea  of  the  good  is  the  whole  of  ethics. 

It  would  be  forming  a  false  and  narrow  idea  of  ethics  to  con- 
fine them  within  the  inclosure  of  individual  consciousness. 
There  are  public  ethics,  as  well  as  private  ethics,  and  public 
ethics  embrace,  with  the  relations  of  men  among  themselves,  so 
far  as  men,  their  relations  as  citizens  and  as  members  of  a  state. 
Ethics  extend  wherever  is  found  in  any  degree  the  idea  of  the 
good.  Now,  where  does  this  idea  manifest  itself  more,  and 
where  do  justice  and  injustice,  virtue  and  crime,  heroism  and 
weakness  appear  more  openly,  than  on  the  theatre  of  civil  life  ? 
Moreover,  is  there  any  thing  that  has  a  more  decisive  influence 
over  manners,  even  of  individuals,  than  the  institutions  of  peoples 
and  the  constitutions  of  states  ?  If  the  idea  of  the  good  goes 


LECTURE   ELEVENTH. 

thus  far,  it  must  be  followed  thither,  as  recently  the  idea  of  the 
beautiful  has  introduced  us  into  the  domain  of  art. 

Philosophy  usurps  no. foreign  power;  but  it  is  not  disposed  to 
relinquish  its  right  of  examination  over  all  the  great  manifesta- 
tions of  human  nature.  All  philosophy  that  does  not  terminate 
in  ethics,  is  hardly  worthy  of  the  name,  and  all  ethics  that  do 
not  terminate  at  least  in  general  views  on  society  and  govern- 
ment, are  powerless  ethics,  that  have  neither  counsels  nor  rules 
to  give  humanity  in  its  most  difficult  trials. 

It  seems  that  at  the  point  where  we  have  arrived,  the  meta- 
physics and  aesthetics  that  we  have  taught  evidently  involve  such 
a  doctrine  of  morality  and  not  such  another,  that,  accordingly, 
the  question  of  the  good,  that  question  so  fertile  and  so  vast,  is 
for  us  wholly  solved,  and  that  we  can  deduce,  by  way  of  reason- 
ing, the  moral  theory  that  is  derived  from  our  theory  of  the 
beautiful  and  our  theory  of  the  true.  We  might  do  this,  per- 
haps, but  we  will  not.  This  would  be  abandoning  the  method 
that  we  have  hitherto  followed,  that  method  that  proceeds  by 
observation,  and  .not  by  deduction,  and  makes  consulting  experi- 
ence a  law  to  itself.  We  do  not  grow  weary  of  experience.  Let 
us  attach  ourselves  faithfully  to  the  psychological  method ;  it  has 
its  delays ;  it  condemns  us  to  more  than  one  repetition,  but  it 
places  us  in  the  beginning,  and  a  long  time  retains  us  at  the 
source  of  all  reality,  and  all  light. 

The  first  maxim  of  the  psychological  method  is  this :  True 
philosophy  invents  nothing,  it  establishes  and  describes  what  is. 
Now  here,  what  is,  is  the  natural  and  permanent  belief  of  the 
being  that  we  are  studying,  to  wit,  man.  What  is,  then,  in  re- 
lation to  the  good,  the  natural  and  permanent  belief  of  the  human 
race  ?  Such  is,  in  our  eyes,  the  first  question. 

With  us,  in  fact,  the  human  race  does  not  take  one  side,  and 
philosophy  the  other.  Philosophy  is  the  interpreter  of  the 
human  race.  What  the  human  race  thinks  and  believes,  often 
unconsciously,  philosophy  re-collects,  explains,  establishes.  It  is 
the  faithful  and  complete  expression  of  human  nature,  and  human 


PRIMARY  NOTIONS   OF  COMMON   SENSE.  217 

nature  is  entire  in  each  of  us  philosophers,  and  in  every  other 
man.  Among  us,  it  is  attained  by  consciousness ;  among  other 
men,  it  manifests  itself  in  their  words  and  actions.  Let  us,  then, 
interrogate  the  latter  and  the  former ;  let  us  especially  interrogate 
our  own  consciousness ;  let  us  clearly  recognize  what  the  human 
race  thinks ;  we  shall  then  see  what  should  be  the  office  of  phi- 
losophy. 

Is  there  a  human  language  known  to  us  that  has  not  different 
expressions  for  good  and  evil,  for  just  and  unjust  ?  Is  there  any 
language,  in  which,  by  the  side  of  the  words  pleasure,  interest, 
utility,  happiness,  are  not  also  found  the  words  sacrifice,  disin- 
terestedness, devotedness,  virtue  ?  Do  not  all  languages,  as  well 
as  all  nations,  speak  of  liberty,  duty,  and  right  ? 

Here,  perhaps,  some  disciple  of  Condillac  and  Helvetius  will 
ask  us  whether,  in  this  regard,  we  possess  authentic  dictionaries 
of  the  language  of  savage  tribes  found  by  voyagers  in  the  isles 
of  the  ocean?  No;  but  we  have  not  made  our  philosophic  re- 
ligion out  of  the  superstitions  and  prejudices  of  a  certain  school. 
We  absolutely  deny  that  it  is  necessary  to  study  human  nature 
in  the  famous  savage  of  Aveyron,  or  in  the  like  of  him  of  the 
isles  of  the  ocean,  or  the  American  continent.  The  savage  state 
offers  us  humanity  in  swaddling-clothes,  thus  to  speak,  the  germ 
of  humanity,  but  not  humanity  entire.  The  true  man  is  the  per- 
fect man  of  his  kind ;  true  human  nature  is  human  nature  ar- 
rived at  its  development,  as  true  society  is  also  perfected  society. 
We  do  not  think  it  worth  the  while  to  ask  a  savage  his  opinion 
on  the  Apollo  Belvidere,  neither  will  we  ask  him  for  the  princi- 
ples that  constitute  the  moral  nature  of  man,  because  in  him  this 
moral  nature  is  only  sketched  and  not  completed.  Our  great 
philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  sometimes  a  little  too 
much  pleased  with  hypotheses  in  which  God  plays  the  principal 
part,  and  crushes  human  liberty.1  The  philosophy  of  the  eigh- 


1  See  2d  Series,  vol.  ii.,  lect.  11  and  12  ;  4th  Series,  vol.  ii.,  last  pages  of 
Jacqueline  Pascal,  and  the  Fragments  of  the  Cartesian  Philosophy,  p.  469. 

10 


218  LECTURE    ELEVENTH.    . 

teenth  century  threw  itself  into  the  opposite  extreme ;  it  had  re 
course  to  hypotheses  of  a  totally  different  character,  among  others, 
to  a  pretended  natural  state,  whence  it  undertook,  with  infinite 
pains,  to  draw  society  and  man  as  we  now  see  them.  Rousseau 
plunged  into  the  forests,  in  order  to  find  there  the  model  of  lib- 
erty and  equality.  That  is  the  commencement  of  his  politics. 
But  wait  a  little,  and  soon  you  will  see  the  apostle  of  the  natural 
state,  driven,  by  a  necessary  inconsequence,  from  one  excess  to  an 
opposite  excess,  instead  of  the  sweets  of  savage  liberty,  proposing 
to  us  the  Contrat  Social  and  Lacedemone.  Condillac1  studies 
the  human  mind  in  a  statue  whose  senses  enter  into  exercise  un- 
der the  magic  wand  of  a  systematic  analysis,  and  are  developed 
in  the  measure  and  progress  that  are  convenient  to  him.  The 
statue  successively  acquires  our  five  senses,  but  there  is  one  thing 
that  it  does  not  acquire,  that  is,  a  mind  like  the  human  mind, 
and  a  soul  like  ours.  And  this  was  what  was  then  called  the 
experimental  method  !  Let  us  leave  there  all  those  hypotheses. 
In  order  to  understand  reality,  let  us  study  it,  and  not  imagine  it. 
Let  us  take  humanity  as  it  is  incontestably  shown  to  us  in  its 
actual  characters,  and  not  as  it  may  have  been  in  a  primitive, 
purely  hypothetical  state,  in  those  unformed  lineaments  or  that 
degradation  which  is  called  the  savage  state.  In  that,  without 
doubt,  may  be  found  signs  or  souvenirs  of  humanity,  and,  if  this 
were  the  plea,  we  might,  in  our  turn,  examine  the  recitals  of 
voyages,  and  find,  even  in  that  darkness  of  infancy  or  decrepitude, 
admirable  flashes  of  light,  noble  instincts,  which  already  appear, 
or  still  subsist,  presaging  or  recalling  humanity.  But,  for  the 
sake  of  exactness  of  method  and  true  analysis,  we  turn  our  eyes 
from  infancy  and  the  savage  state,  in  order  to  direct  them  towards 
the  being  who  is  the  sole  object  of  our  studies,  the  actual  man, 
the  real  and  completed  man. 

Do  you  know  a  language,  a  people,  which  does  not  possess 
the  word  disinterested  virtue  ?     Who  is  especially  called  an  lion- 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lectures  2  and  3,  Condillac. 


PKIMAEY    NOTIONS   OF   COMMON   SENSE.  219 

est  man  ?  Is  it  the  skilful  calculator,  devoting  himself  to  making 
his  own  affairs  the  best  possible,  or  he  who,  under  all  circum- 
stances, is  disposed  to  observe  justice  against  his  apparent  or 
real  interest  ?  Take  away  the  idea  that  an  honest  man  is  capa- 
ble, to  a  certain  degree,  of  resisting  the  attractions  of  personal 
interest,  and  of  making  some  sacrifices  for  opinion,  for  propriety, 
for  that  which  is  or  appears  honest,  and  you  take  away  the 
foundation  of  that  title  of  honest  man,  even  in  the  most  ordinary 
sense.  That  disposition  to  prefer  what  is  good  to  our  pleasure, 
to  our  personal  utility,  in  a  word,  to  interest — that  disposition 
more  or  less  strong,  more  or  less  constant,  more  or  less  tested, 
measures  the  different  degrees  of  virtue.  A  man  who  carries 
disinterestedness  as  far  as  devotion,  is  called  a  hero,  let  him  be 
concealed  in  the  humblest  condition,  or  placed  on  a  public  stage. 
There  is  devotedness  in  obscure  as  well  as  in  exalted  stations. 
There  are  heroes  of  probity,  of  honor,  of  loyalty,  in  the  relations 
of  ordinary  life,  as  well  as  heroes  of  courage  and  patriotism  in 
the  counsels  of  peoples  and  at  the  head  of  armies.  All  these 
names,  with  their  meaning  well  recognized,  are  in  all  languages, 
and  constitute  a  certain  and  universal  fact.  We  may  explain  this 
fact,  but  on  one  imperative  condition,  that  in  explaining  we  do 
not  destroy  it.  Now,  is  the  idea  and  the  word  disinterestedness 
explained  to  us  by  reducing  disinterestedness  to  interest  ?  This 
is  what  common  sense  invincibly  repels. 

Poets  have  no  system, — they  address  themselves  to  men  as 
they  really  are,  in  order  to  produce  in  them  certain  effects.  Is 
it  skilful  selfishness  or  disinterested  virtue  that  poets  celebrate  ? 
Do  they  demand  our  applause  for  the  success  of  fortunate  ad- 
dress, or  for  the  voluntary  sacrifices  of  virtue  ?  The  poet  knows 
that  there  is  at  the  foundation  of  the  human  soul  I  know  not 
what  marvellous  power  of  disinterestedness  and  devotedness. 
In  addressing  himself  to  this  instinct  of  the  heart,  he  is  sure  of 
awakening  a  sublime  echo,  of  opening  every  source  of  the  pa- 
thetic. 

Consult  the  annals  of  the  human  race,  and  you  will  find  in 


220 


LECTURE   ELEVENTH. 


them  man  everywhere,  and  more  and  more,  claiming  his  liberty. 
This  word  liberty  is  as  old  as  man  himself.  What  then !  Men 
wish  to  be  free,  and  man  himself  should  not  be  free  !  The  word 
nevertheless  exists  with  the  most  determined  signification.  It 
signifies  that  man  believes  himself  a  free  being,  not  only  animated 
and  sensible,  but  endowed  with  will,  a  will  that  belongs  to  him, 
that  consequently  cannot  admit  over  itself  the  tyranny  of  another 
will  which  would  make,  in  regard  to  him,  the  office  of  fatality, 
even  were  it  that  of  the  most  beneficent  fatality.  Do  you  sup- 
pose that  the  word  liberty  could  ever  have  been  formed,  if  the 
thing  itself  did  not  exist  ?  None  but  a  free  being  could  possess 
the  idea  of  liberty.  Will  it  be  said  that  the  liberty  of  man  is 
only  an  illusion  ?  The  wishes  of  the  human  race  are  then  the 
most  inexplicable  extravagance.  In  denying  the  essential  dis- 
tinction between  liberty  and  fatality,  we  contradict  all  languages 
and  all  received  notions ;  we  have,  it  is  true,  the  advantage  of 
absolving  tyrants,  but  we  degrade  heroes.  They  have,  then, 
fought  and  died  for  a  chimera ! 

All  languages  contain  the  words  esteem  and  contempt.  To 
esteem,  to  despise, — these  are  universal  expressions,  certain  phe- 
nomena, from  which  an  impartial  analysis  can  draw  the  highest 
notions.  Can  we  despise  a  being  who,  in  his  acts,  should  not  be 
free,  a  being  who  should  not  know  the  good,  and  should  not  feel 
himself  obligated  to  fulfil  it  ?  Suppose  that  the  good  is  not 
essentially  different  from  the  evil,  suppose  that  there  is  in  the 
world  only  interest  more  or  less  well  understood,  that  there  is 
no  real  duty,  and  that  man  is  not  essentially  a  free  being, — it  is 
impossible  to  explain  rationally  the  word  contempt.  It  is  the 
same  with  the  word  esteem. 

Esteem  is  a  fact  which,  faithfully  expressed,  contains  a  com- 
plete philosophy  as  solid  as  generous.  Esteem  has  two  certain 
characters  :  1st,  It  is  a  disinterested  sentiment  in  the  soul  of  him 
who  feels  it ;  2d,  It  is  applied  only  to  disinterested  acts.  We 
do  not  esteem  at  will,  and  because  it  is  our  interest  to  esteem. 
Neither  do  we  esteem  an  action  or  a  person  because  they  have 


PRIMARY   NOTIONS    OF   COMMON   SENSE.  221 

been  successful.  Success,  fortunate  calculation,  may  make  us 
envied ;  it  does  not  bring  esteem,  which  has  another  price. 

Esteem  in  a  certain  degree,  and  under  certain  circumstances, 
is  respect,-?— respect,  a  holy  and  sacred  word  which  the  most 
subtile  or  the  loosest  analysis  will  never  degrade  to  expressing  a 
sentiment  that  is  related  to  ourselves,  and  is  applied  to  actions 
crowned  by  fortune. 

Take  again  these  two  words,  these  two  facts  analogous  to  the 
first  two,  admiration  and  indignation.  Esteem  and  contempt 
are  rather  judgments ;  indignation  and  admiration  are  sentiments, 
but  sentiments  that  pertain  to  intelligence  and  envelop  a  judg- 
ment.1 

Admiration  is  an  essentially  disinterested  sentiment.  See 
whether  there  is  any  interest  in  the  world  that  has  the  power  to 
give  you  admiration  for  any  thing  or  any  person.  If  you  were 
interested,  you  might  feign  admiration,  but  you  would  not  feel  it. 
A  tyrant  with  death  in  his  hand,  may  constrain  you  to  appear 
to  admire,  but  not  to  admire  in  reality.  Even  affection  does  not 
determine  admiration ;  whilst  a  heroic  trait,  even  in  an  enemy, 
compels  you  to  admire. 

The  phenomenon  opposed  to  admiration  is  indignation.  In- 
dignation is  no  more  anger  than  admiration  is  desire.  Anger  is 
wholly  personal.  Indignation  is  never  directly  related  to  us ;  it 
may  have  birth  in  the  naidst  of  circumstances  wherein  we  are 
engaged,  but  the  foundation  and  the  dominant  character  of  the 
phenomenon  in  itself  is  to  be  disinterested.  Indignation  is  in  its 
nature  generous.  If  I  am  a  victim  of  an  injustice,  I  may  feel  at 
once  anger  and  indignation,  anger  against  him  that  injures  me. 
indignation  towards  him  who  is  unjust  to  one  of  his  fellow-men. 
We  may  be  indignant  towards  ourselves ;  we  are  indignant 
towards  every  thing  that  wounds  the  sentiment  of  justice.  Indig- 
nation covers  a  judgment,  the  judgment  that  he  who  commits 
such  or  such  an  action,  whether  against  us,  or  even  for  us,  does 

1  S«e  the  Theory  of  Sentiment,  part  i.,  lecture  5. 


LECTURE   ELEVENTH. 

an  action  unworthy,  contrary  to  our  dignity,  to  his  own  dignity, 
to  human  dignity.  The  injury  sustained  is  not  the  measure  of 
indignation,  as  the  advantage  received  is  not  that  of  admiration. 
We  felicitate  ourselves  on  possessing  or  having  acquired  a  useful 
thing ;  but  we  never  admire,  on  that  account,  either  ourselves  or 
the  thing  that  we  have  just  acquired.  So  we  repel  the  stone  that 
wounds  us,  we  do  not  feel  indignant  towards  it. 

Admiration  elevates  and  ennobles  the  soul.  The  generous 
parts  of  human  nature  are  disengaged  and  exalted  in  presence  of, 
and  as  it  were  in  contact  with,  the  image  of  the  good.  This  is 
the  reason  why  admiration  is  already  by  itself  so  beneficent,  even 
should  it  be  deceived  in  its  object.  Indignation  is  the  result  of 
these  same  generous  parts  of  the  soul,  which,  wounded  by  injus- 
tice, are  highly  roused  and  protest  in  the  name  of  offended  human 
dignity. 

Look  at  men  in  action,  and  you  will  see  them  imposing  upon 
themselves  great  sacrifices  in  order  to  conquer  the  suffrages  of 
their  fellows.  The  empire  of  opinion  is  immense, — vanity  alone 
does  not  explain  it ;  it  doubtless  also  pertains  to  vanity,  but  it 
has  deeper  and  better  roots.  We  judge  that  other  men  are,  like 
us,  sensible  to  good  and  evil,  that  they  distinguish  between  virtue 
and  vice,  that  they  are  capable  of  being  indignant  and  admiring, 
of  esteeming  and  respecting,  as  well  as  despising.  This  power  is 
in  us,  we  have  consciousness  of  it,  we  know  that  other  men 
possess  it  as  well  as  we,  and  it  is  this  power  that  frightens  us. 
Opinion  is  our  own  consciousness  transferred  to  the  public,  and 
there  disengaged  from  all  complaisance  and  armed  with  an  inflex- 
ible severity.  To  the  remorse  in  our  own  hearts,  responds  the 
shame  in  that  second  soul  which  we  have  made  ourselves,  and  is 
called  public  opinion.  W"e  must  not  be  astonished  at  the  sweets 
of  popularity.  We  are  more  sure  of  having  done  well,  when  to 
the  testimony  of  our  consciousness  we  are  able  to  join  that  of  the 
consciousness  of  our  fellow-men.  There  is  only  one  thing  that 
can  sustain  us  against  opinion,  and  even  place  us  above  it :  it  is 
the  firm  and  sure  testimony  of  our  consciousness,  because,  in  fine, 


PRIMARY   NOTIONS   OF  COMMON   SENSE.  223 

the  public  and  the  whole  human  race  are  compelled  to  judge  us 
according  to  appearance,  whilst  we  judge  ourselves  infallibly  and 
by  the  most  certain  of  all  knowledge. 

Ridicule  is  the  fear  of  opinion  in  small  things.  The  force  of 
ridicule  is  wholly  in  the  supposition  that  there  is  a  common  taste, 
a  common  type  of  what  is  proper,  that  directs  men  in  their  judg- 
ments, and  even  in  their  pleasantries,  which  in  their  way  are  also 
judgments.  Without  this  supposition,  ridicule  falls  of  itself,  and 
pleasantry  loses  its  sting.  But  it  is  immortal,  as  well  as  the  dis- 
tinction between  good  and  evil,  between  the  beautiful  and  the 
ugly,  between  what  is  proper  and  what  is  improper. 

When  we  have  not  succeeded  in  any  measure  undertaken  for 
our  interest  and  prosperity,  we  experience  a  sentiment  of  pain 
that  is  called  regret.  But  we  do  not  confound  regret  with  that 
other  sentiment  that  rises  in  the  soul  when  we  are  conscious  of 
having  done  something  morally  bad.  This  sentiment  is  also  a 
pain,  but  of  quite  a  different  nature, — it  is  remorse,  repentance. 
That  we  have  lost  in  play,  for  example,  is  disagreeable  to  us ;  but 
if,  in  gaining,  we  have  the  consciousness  of  having  deceived  our 
adversary,  we  experience  a  very  different  sentiment. 

We  might  prolong  and  vary  these  examples.  We  have  said 
enough  to  be  entitled  to  conclude  that  human  language  and  the 
sentiments  that  it  expresses  are  inexplicable,  if  we  do  not  admit 
the  essential  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  between  virtue 
and  crime,  crime  founded  on  interest,  virtue  founded  on  disinter- 
estedness. 

Disturb  this  distinction,  and  you  disturb  human  life  and  entire 
society.  Permit  me  to  take  an  extreme,  tragic,  and  terrible  ex- 
ample. Here  is  a  man  that  has  just  been  judged.  He  has  been 
condemned  to  death,  and  is  about  to  be  executed — to  be  deprived 
of  life.  And  why  ?  Place  yourself  in  the  system  that  does  not 
admit  the  essential  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  and  ponder 
on  what  is  stupidly  atrocious  in  this  act  of  human  justice.  What 
has  the  condemned  done  ?  Evidently  a  thing  indifferent  in  itself. 
For  if  there  is  no  other  outward  distinction  than  that  of  pleasure 


224:  LECTURE   ELEVENTH. 

and  pain,  I  defy  any  one  to  qualify  any  human  action,  whatever 
it  may  be,  as  criminal,  without  the  most  absurd  inconsequence. 
But  this  thing,  indifferent  in  itself,  a  certain  number  of  men,  called 
legislators,  have  declared  to  be  a  crime.  This  purely  arbitrary 
declaration  has  found  no  echo  in  the  heart  of  this  man.  He  has 
not  been  able  to  feel  the  justice  of  it,  since  there  is  nothing  in 
itself  just.  He  has  therefore  done,  without  remorse,  what  this 
declaration  arbitrarily  interdicted.  The  court  proceeds  to  prove 
to  him  that  he  has  not  succeeded,  but  not  that  he  has  done  con- 
trary to  justice,  for  there  is  no  justice.  (I  maintain  that  every 
condemnation,  be  it  to  death,  or  to  any  punishment  whatever, 
imperatively  supposes,  in  order  to  be  any  thing  else  than  a  repres- 
sion of  violence  by  violence,  the  four  following  points  : — 1st,  That 
there  is  an  essential  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  justice  and 
injustice,  and  that  to  this  distinction  is  attached,  for  every  intelli- 
gent and  free  being,  the  obligation  of  conforming  to  good  and 
justice ;  2d,  That  man  is  an  intelligent  and  free  being,  capable  of 
comprehending  this  distinction,  and  the  obligation  that  accompa- 
nies it,  and  of  adhering  to  it  naturally,  independently  of  all  con- 
vention, and  every  positive  law ;  capable  also  of  resisting  the 
temptations  that  bear  him  towards  evil  and  injustice,  and  of  ful- 
filling the  sacred  law  of  natural  justice ;  3d,  That  every  act 
contrary  to  justice  deserves  to  be  repressed  by  force,  and  even 
punished  in  reparation  of  the  fault  committed,  and  independently 
too  of  all  law  and  all  convention  ;  4th,  That  man  naturally  recog- 
nizes the  distinction  between  the  merit  and  demerit  of  actions,  as 
he  recognizes  the  distinction  between  the  just  and  the  unjust,  and 
knows  that  every  penalty  applied  to  an  unjust  act  is  itself  most 
strictly  just. 

Such  are  the  foundations  of  that  power  of  judging  and  punish- 
ing which  is  entire  society.  Society  has  not  made  those  princi- 
ples for  its  own  use ;  they  are  much  anterior  to  it,  they  are 
contemporaneous  with  thought  and' the  soul,  and  upon  these  rests 
society,  with  its  laws  and  its  institutions.  Laws  are  legitimate— ^^^ 
by  their  relation  to  these  eternal  laws.  .  The  surest  power  of  in- 


PRIMARY   NOTIONS   OF   COMMON   SENSE.  225 

stitutions  resides  in  the  respect  that  these  principles  bear  with 
them  and  extend  to  every  thing  that  participates  in  them.  Edu- 
cation develops  them,  it  does  not  create  them.  They  direct  the 
legislator  who  makes  the  law,  and  the  judge  who  applies  it. 
They  are  present  to  the"  accused  brought  before  the  tribunal,  they 
inspire  every  just  sentence,  they  give  it  authority  in  the  soul  of 
the  condemned,  and  in  that  of  the  spectator,  and  they  consecrate 
the  employment  of  force  necessary  for  his  execution.  Take  away 
a  single  one  of  these  principles,  and  all  human  justice  is  over- 
thrown, no  longer  is  there  any  thing  but  a  mass  of  arbitrary  con- 
ventions which  no  one  in  conscience  is  bound  to  respect,  which 
may  be  violated  without  remorse,  which  are  sustained  only  by 
the  display  of  extreme  punishments.  /  The  decisions  of  such  a 
justice  are  not  true  judgments,  but  acts  of  force,  and  civil  society 
is  only  an  arena  where  men  contend  with  each  other  without 
duties  and  rights,  without  any  other  object  than  that  of  pro- 
curing for  themselves  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  enjoyment, 
of  procuring  it  by  conquest  and  preserving  it  by  force  or  cunning, 
save  throwing  over  all  that  the  cloak  of  hypocritical  laws. 

It  is  true,  such  is  the  aspect  under  which  skepticism  makes  us 
consider  society  and  human  justice,  driving  us  through  despair 
to  revolt  and  disorder,  and  bringing  us  back  through  despair 
again  to  quite  another  yoke  than  that  of  reason  and  virtue,  to 
that  regulated  disorder  which  is  called  despotism.  The  spectacle 
of  human  things,  viewed  coolly,  and  without  the  spirit  of  system, 
is,  thank  God,  less  sombre.  Without  doubt,  society  and  human 
justice  have  still  many  imperfections  which  time  discovers  and 
corrects ;  but  it  may  be  said,  that  in  general  they  rest  on  truth 
and  natural  equity.  The  proof  of  it  is,  that  society  everywhere 
subsists,  and  is  even  developed.  Moreover,  facts,  were  they  such 
as  the  melancholy  pen  of  a  Pascal  or  a  Rousseau  represent  them 
to  be,  facts  are  not  all, — before  facts  is  right ;  and  this  idea  of 
right  alone,  if  it  is  real,  suffices  to  overturn  an  abasing  system, 
and  save  human  dignity.  Now,  is  the  idea  of  right  a  chimera? 
T  again  appeal  to  languages,  to  individual  consciousness,  to  the 

10* 


226  LECTUKE  ELEVENTH. 

human  race, — is  it  not  true  that  fact  is  everywhere  distinguished 
from  right,  fact  which  too  often,  perhaps,  but  not  always,  as  it  is 
said,  is  opposed  to  right ;  and  right  that  subdues  and  rules  fact, 
or  protests  against  it  ?  What  word  is  it  that  restrains  most  in 
human  societies  ?  Is  it  not  that  of  right  ?  Look  for  a  language 
that  does  not  contain  it.  On  all  sides,  society  is  bristling  with 
rights.  There  is  even  a  distinction  made  between  natural  right 
and  positive  right,  between  what  is  legal  and  what  is  equitable. 
It  is  proclaimed  that  force  should  be  in  the  service  of  right,  and 
not  right  at  the  mercy  of  force.  The  triumphs  of  force,  wherever 
we  perceive  them,  either  under  our  eyes,  or  by  the  aid  of  history 
in  bygone  centuries,  or  by  favor  of  universal  publicity  beyond  the 
ocean,  and  in  foreign  continents,  rouse  indignation  in  the  disin- 
terested spectator  or  reader.  On  the  contrary,  he  who  inscribes 
on  his  banner  the  name  of  right,  by  that  alone  interests  us ;  the 
cause  of  right,  or  what  we  suppose  to  be  the  cause  of  right,  is  for 
us  the  cause  of  humanity.  It  is  also  a  fact,  and  an  incontestable 
fact,  that  in  the  eyes  of  man  fact  is  not  every  thing,  and  that  the 
idea  of  right  is  a  universal  idea,  graven  in  shining  and  inefface- 
able characters,  if  not  in  the  visible  world,  at  least  in  that  of 
thought  and  the  soul ;  concerning  that  is  the  question ;  it  is  also 
that  which  in  the  long  run  reforms  and  governs  the  other. 

Individual  consciousness,  conceived  and  transferred  to  -the  en- 
tire species,  is  called  common  sense.  It  is  common  sense  that 
has  made,  that  sustains,  that  develops  languages,  natural  and  per- 
manent beliefs,  society  and  its  fundamental  institutions.  Gram- 
marians have  not  invented  languages,  nor  legislators  societies,  nor 
philosophers  general  beliefs.  All  these  things  have  not  been 
personally  done,  but  by  the  whole  world, — by  the  genius  of  hu- 
manity. 

Common  sense  is  deposited  in  its  works.  All  languages,  and 
all  human  institutions  contain  the  ideas  and  the  sentiments  that 
we  have  just  called  to  mind  and  described,  and  especially  the 
distinction  between  good  and  evil,  between  justice  and  injustice, 
between  free  will  and  desire,  between  duty  and  interest,  between 


PRIMARY    NOTIONS    OF    COMMON    SENSE.  227 

virtue  and  happiness,  with  the  profoundly  rooted  belief  that  hap- 
piness is  a  recompense  due  to  virtue,  and  that  crime  in  itself 
deserves  to  be  punished,  and  calls  for  the  reparation  of  a  just 
suffering. 

These  things  are  attested  by  the  words  and  actions  of  men. 
Such  are  the  sincere  and  impartial,  but  somewhat  confused,  some- 
what gross  notions  of  common  sense. 

Here  begins  the  part  of  philosophy.  It  has  before  it  two  dif- 
ferent routes ;  it  can  do  one  of  two  things:  either  accept  the 
notions  of  common  sense,  elucidate  them,  thereby  develop  and 
increase  them,  and,  by  faithfully  expressing  them,  fortify  the  nat- 
ural beliefs  of  humanity ;  or,  preoccupied  with  such  or  such  a 
principle,  impose  it  upon  the  natural  data  of  common  sense,  ad- 
mit those  that  agree  with  this  principle,  artificially  bend  the  others 
to  these,  or  openly  deny  them ;  this  is  what  is  called  making  a 
system. 

Philosophic  systems  are  not  philosophy ;  they  try  to  realize 
the  idea  of  it,  as  civil  institutions  try  to  realize  that  of  justice,  as 
the  arts  express- in  their  way  infinite  beauty,  as  the  sciences  pur- 
sue universal  science.  Philosophic  systems  are  necessarily  very 
imperfect,  otherwise  there  never  would  have  been  two  systems  in 
the  world.  Fortunate  are  those  that  go  on  doing  good,  that  ex- 
pand in  the  minds  and  souls  of  men,  with  some  innocent  errors, 
the  sacred  love  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good !  But 
philosophic  systems  follow  their  times  much  more  than  they  di- 
rect them  ;  they  receive  their  spirit  from  the  hands  of  their  age. 
Transferred  to  France  towards  the  close  of  the  regency  and  under 
the  reign  of  Louis  XV.,  the  philosophy  of  Locke  gave  birth  there 
to  a  celebrated  school,  which  for  a  long  time  governed  and  still 
subsists  among  us,  protected  by  ancient  habits,  but  in  radical  op- 
position to  our  new  institutions  and  our  new  wants.  Sprung  from 
the  bosom  of  tempests,  nourished  in  the  cradle  of  a  revolution, 
brought  up  under  the  bad  discipline  of  the  genius  of  war,  the 
nineteenth  century  cannot  recognize  its  image  and  find  its  instincts 
in  a  philosophy  born  under  the  influence  of  the  voluptuous  refine- 


228  LECTURE  ELEVENTH. 

ments  of  Versailles,  admirably  fitted  for  the  decrepitude  of  an 
arbitrary  monarchy,  but  not  for  the  laborious  life  of  a  young  lib- 
erty surrounded  with  perils.  As  for  us,  after  having  combated 
the  philosophy  of  sensation  in  the  metaphysics  which  it  substi- 
tuted for  Cartesianism,  and  in  the  deplorable  aesthetics,  now  too 
accredited,  under  which  succumbed  our  great  national  art  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  combat  it  again  in  the 
ethics  that  were  its  necessary  product,  the  ethics  of  interest. 

The  exposition  and  refutation  of  these  pretended  ethics  will  be 
the  subject  of  the  next  lecture. 


LECTUEE  XII. 

THE     ETHICS     OF     INTEREST.1 

Exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  interest. — What  there  is  of  truth  in  this  doc- 
trine.— Its  defects.  1st,  It  confounds  liberty  and  desire,  and  thereby 
abolishes  liberty.  2d.  It  cannot  explain  the  fundamental  distinction  be- 
tween good  and  evil.  3d.  It  cannot  explain  obligation  and  duty.  4th. 
Nor  right.  5th.  Nor  the  principle  of  merit  and  demerit. — Consequences 
of  the  ethics  of  interest :  that  they  cannot  admit  a  providence,  and  lead  to 
despotism. 

THE  philosophy  of  sensation,  setting  out  from  a  single  fact, 
agreeable  or  painful  sensation,  necessarily  arrives  in  ethics  at  a 
single  principle, — interest.  The  whole  of  the  system  may  be 
explained  as  follows : 

Man  is  sensible  to  pleasure  and  pain :  he  shuns  the  one  and 
seeks  the  other.  That  is  his  first  instinct,  and  this  instinct  will 
never  abandon  him.  Pleasure  may  change  so  far  as  its  object  is 
concerned,  and  be  diversified  in  a  thousand  ways :  but  whatever 
form  it  takes, — physical  pleasure,  intellectual  pleasure,  moral 
pleasure,  it  is  always  pleasure  that  man  pursues. 

The  agreeable  generalized  is  the  useful ;  and  the  greatest  pos- 
sible sum  of  pleasure,  whatever  it  may  be,  no  longer  concentrated 
within  such  or  such  an  instant,  but  distributed  over  a  certain  ex- 
tent of  duration,  is  happiness.2 


1  On  the  ethics  of  interest,  to  this  lecture  may  be  joined  those  of  vol.  iii. 
of  the  1st  Series,  on  the  doctrine  of  Helvetius  and  St.  Lambert. 

8  The  word  bonTwur,  which  has  no  exact  English  equivalent,  which  M. 
Cousin  uses  in  his  ethical  discussions  in  the  precise  sense  of  the  definition 
given  above,  we  have  sometimes  translated  happiness,  sometimes  good  for- 
tune, sometimes  prosperity,  sometimes  fortune.  When  one  has  in  mind 
the  thing,  he  will  not  be  troubled  by  the  more  or  less  exact  word  that  indi- 


230  LECTURE    TWELFTH. 

Happiness,  like  pleasure,  is  relative  to  him  who  experiences  it ; 
it  is  essentially  personal.  Ourselves,  and  ourselves  alone  we 
love,  in  loving  pleasure  and  happiness. 

Interest  is  that  which  prompts  us  to  seek  in  every  thing  our 
pleasure  and  our  happiness. 

If  happiness  is  the  sole  end  of  life,  interest  is  the  sole  motive 
of  all  our  actions. 

Man  is  only  sensible  to  his  interest,  but  he  understands  it  well 
or  ill.  Much  art  is  necessary  in  order  to  be  happy.  We  are 
not  ready  to  give  ourselves  up  to  all  the  pleasures  that  are  offered 
on  the  highway  of  life,  without  examining  whether  these  pleasures 
do  not  conceal  many  a  pain.  Present  pleasure  is  not  every 
thing, — it  is  necessary  to  take  thought  for  the  future ;  it  is 
necessary  to  know  how  to  renounce  joys  that  may  bring  regret, 
and  sacrifice  pleasure  to  happiness,  that  is  to  say,  to  pleasure 
still,  but  pleasure  more  enduring  and  less  intoxicating.  The 
pleasures  of  the  body  are  not  the  only  ones, — there  are  other 
pleasures,  those  of  mind,  even  those  of  opinion :  the  sage  tem- 
pers them  by  each  other. 

The  ethics  of  interest  are  nothing  else  than  the  ethics  of  per- 
fected pleasure,  substituting  happiness  for  pleasure,  the  useful 
for  the  agreeable,  prudence  for  passion.  It  admits,  like  the 
human  race,  the  words  good  and  evil,  virtue  and  vice,  merit 
and  demerit,  punishment  and  reward,  but  it  explains  them  in  its 
own  way.  The  good  is  that  which  in  the  eyes  of  reason  is  con- 
formed to  our  true  interest ;  evil  is  that  which  is  contrary  to  our 
true  interest.  Virtue  is  that  wisdom  which  knows  how  to  resist 
the  enticement  of  passions,  discerns  what  is  truly  useful,  and 
surely  proceeds  to  happiness.  Vice  is  that  aberration  of  mind 
and  character  that  sacrifices  happiness  to  pleasures  without  du- 
ration or  full  of  dangers.  Merit  and  demerit,  punishment  and 


cates  it : — all  language,  at  best,  is  only  symbolic ;  it  bears  the  same  relation 
to  thought  as  the  forms  of  nature  do  to  the  laws  that  produce  and  govern 
them.  The  true  reader  never  mistakes  the  symbol  for  the  thing  symbolized, 
the  shadow  for  the  reality. 


THE   ETHICS    OF   INTEREST.  231 

reward,  are  the  consequences  of  virtue  and  vice : — for  not  know- 
ing how  to  seek  happiness  by  the  road  of  wisdom,  we  are  pun- 
ished by  not  attaining  it.  '\  The  ethics  of  interest  do  not  pretend 
to  destroy  any  of  the  duties  consecrated  by  public  opinion ;  it 
establishes  that  all  are  conformed  to  our  personal  interest,  and  it 
is  thereby  that  they  are  duties.  To  do  good  to  men  is  the  surest 
means  of  making  them  do  good  to  us ;  and  it  is  also  the  means 
of  acquiring  their  esteem,  their  good  will,  and  their  sympathy, — 
always  agreeable,  and  often  useful.  Disinterestedness  itself  has 
its  explanation.  Doubtless  there  is  no  disinterestedness  in  the 
vulgar  sense  of  the  word,  that  is  to  say,  a  real  sacrifice  of  self, 
which  is  absurd,  but  there  is  the  sacrifice  of  present  interest  to 
future  interest,  of  gross  and  sensual  passion  to  a  nobler  and  more 
delicate  pleasure.  Sometimes  one  renders  to  himself  a  bad 
account  of  the  pleasure  that  he  pursues,  and  in  fault  of  seeing 
clearly  into  his  own  heart,  invents  that  chimera  of  disinterested- 
ness of  which  human  nature  is  incapable,  which  it  cannot  even 
comprehend. 

It  will  be  conceded  that  this  explanation  of  the  ethics  of  inter- 
est is  not  overcharged,  that  it  is  faithful. 

We  go  further, — we  acknowledge  that  these  ethics  are  an  ex- 
treme, but,  up  to  a  certain  point,  a  legitimate  reactio*  against 
the  excessive  rigor  of  stoical  ethics,  especially  ascetic  ethics  that 
smother  sensibility  instead  of  regulating  it,  and,  in  order  to  save 
the  soul  from  passions,  demands  of  it  a  sacrifice  of  all  the  pas- 
sions of  nature  that  resembles  a  suicide. 

Man  was  not  made  to  be  a  sublime  slave,  like  Epictetus,  em- 
ployed in  supporting  bad  fortune  well  without  trying  to  surmount 
it,  nor,  like  the  author  of  the  Imitation,  the  angelic  inhabitant  of 
a  cloister,  calling  for  death  as  a  fortunate  deliverance,  and  antici- 
pating it,  as  far  as  in  him  lies,  by  continual  penitence  and  in 
mute  adoration.  The  love  of  pleasure,  even  the  passions,  have  a 
place  among  the  needs  of  humanity.  Suppress  the  passions,  and 
it  is  true  there  is  no  more  excess ;  neither  is  there  any  mainspring 
of  action, — without  winds  the  vessel  no  longer  proceeds,  and  soon 


LECTURE   TWELFfH. 

sinks  in  the  deep.  Suppose  a  being  that  lacks  love  of  self,  the 
instinct  of  preservation,  the  horror  of  suffering,  especially  the 
horror  of  death,  who  has  neither  the  love  of  pleasure  nor  the  love 
of  happiness,  in  a  word,  destitute  of  all  personal  interest, — such 
a  being  will  not  long  resist  the  innumerable  causes  of  destruction 
that  surround  and  besiege  him ;  he  will  not  remain  a  day.  Never 
can  a  single  family,  nor  the  least  society  be  formed  or  maintained. 
He  who  has  made  man  has  not  confided  the  care  of  his  work  to 
virtue  alone,  to  devotedness  and  sublime  charity, — he  has  willed 
that  the  duration  and  development  of  the  race  and  human  so- 
ciety should  be  placed  upon  simpler  and  surer  foundations ;  and 
this  is  the  reason  why  he  has  given  to  man  the  love  of  self,  the 
instinct  of  preservation,  the  taste  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  the 
passions  that  animate  life,  hope  and  fear,  love,  ambition,  personal 
interest,  in  fine,  a  powerful,  permanent,  universal  motive  that 
urges  us  on  to  continually  ameliorate  our  condition  upon  the 
earth. 

So  we  do  not  contest  with  the  ethics  of  interest  the  reality  of 
their  principle, — we  are  convinced  that  this  principle  exists,  that 
it  has  a  right  to  be.  The  only  question  that  we  raise  is  the  fol- 
lowing : — The  principle  of  interest  is  true  in  itself,  but  are  there 
not  oth^j-  principles  quite  as  true,  quite  as  real  ?  Man  seeks  pleas- 
ure and  happiness,  but  are  there  not  in  him  other  needs,  other 
sentiments,  as  powerful,  as  vital  ?  The  first  and  universal  prin- 
ciple of  human  life  is  the  need  of  the  individual  to  preserve  him- 
self; but  would  this  principle  suffice  to  support  human  life  and 
society  entire  and  as  we  behold  it  ? 

Just  as  the  existence  of  the  body  does  not  hinder  that  of  the 
soul,  and  reciprocally,  so  in  the  ample  bosom  of  humanity  and 
the  profound  designs  of  divine  Providence,  the  principles  that 
differ  most  do  not  exclude  each  other. 

The  philosophy  of  sensation  continually  appeals  to  experience. 
We  also  invoke  experience ;  and  it  is  experience  that  has  given 
us  certain  facts  mentioned  in  the  preceding  lecture,  which  consti- 
tute the  primary  notions  of  common  sense.  We  admit  the  facts 


THE   ETHICS   OF   INTEREST.  233 

that  serve  as  a  foundation  for  the  system  of  interest,  and  reject 
the  system.  The  facts  are  true  in  their  proper  bearing, — the  sys- 
tem is  false  in  attributing  to  them  an  excessive,  limitless  bearing ; 
and  it  is  false  again  in  denying  other  facts  quite  as  incontestable. 
A  sound  philosophy  holds  for  its  primary  law  to  collect  all  real 
facts  and  respect  the  real  differences  that  also  distinguish  them. 
What  it  pursues  before  all,  is  not  unity,  but  truth.1  Now  the 
ethics  of  interest  mutilate  truth, — they  choose  among  facts  those 
that  agree  with  them,  and  reject  all  the  others,  which  are  precisely 
the  very  facts  of  morality.  Exclusive  and  intolerant,  they  deny 
what  they  do  not  explain, — they  form  a  whole  well  united,  which, 
as  an  artificial  work,  may  have  its  merit,  but  is  broken  to  pieces 
as  soon  as  it  comes  to  encounter  human  nature  with  its  grand 
parts. 

We  are  about  to  show  that  the  ethics  of  interest,  an  offspring 
of  the  philosophy  of  sensation,  are  in  contradiction  with  a  cer- 
tain number  of  phenomena,  which  human  nature  presents  to 
whomsoever  interrogates  it  without  the  spirit  of  system. 

1st.  We  have  established,  not  in  the  name  of  a  system,  but  in 
the  name  of  the  most  common  experience,  that  entire  humanity 
believes  in  the  existence,  in  each  of  its  members,  of  a  certain 
force,  a  certain  power  that  is  called  liberty.  Because  it  believes 
in  liberty  in  the  individual,  it  desires  that  this  liberty  should  be 
respected  and  protected  in  society.  Liberty  is  a  fact  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  each  of  us  attests  to  him,  which,  moreover,  is  envel- 
oped in  all  the  moral  phenomena  that  we  have  signalized,  in 
moral  approbation  and  disapprobation,  in  esteem  and  contempt, 
in  admiration  and  indignation,  in  merit  and  demerit,  in  punish- 
ment and  r,eward.  We  ask  the  philosophy  of  sensation  and  the 
ethics  of  interest  what  they  do  with  this  universal  phenomena 
which  all  the  beliefs  of  humanity  suppose,  on  which  entire  life, 
private  and  public,  turns. 

1  On  the  danger  of  seeking  unity  before  all,  see  in  the  3d  Series,  Frag- 
ments PJiilosopliiques,  vol.  iv.,  our  Examination  of  the  Lectures  of  M.  La- 
romeguilre. 


234:  LECTUEE   TWELFTH. 

Every  system  of  ethics,  whatever  it  may  be,  which  contains,  1 
do  not  say  a  rule,  but  a  simple  advice,  implicitly  admits  liberty. 
When  the  ethics  of  interest  advise  a  man  to  sacrifice  the  agree- 
able to  the  useful,  it  apparently  admits  that  man  is  free  to  follow 
or  not  to  follow  this  advice.  But  in  philosophy  it  does  not  suffice 
to  admit  a  fact,  there  must  be  the  right  to  admit  it.  Now,  most 
moralists  of  interest  deny  the  liberty  of  man,  and  no  one  has  the 
right  to  admit  it  in  a  system  that  derives  the  entire  human  soul, 
all  its  faculties  as  well  as  all  its  ideas,  from  sensation  alone  and 
its  developments. 

When  an  agreeable  sensation,  after  having  charmed  our  soul, 
quits  it  and  vanishes,  the  soul  experiences  a  sort  of  suffering,  a 
want,  a  need, — it  is  agitated,  disquieted.  This  disquietude,  at  first 
vague  and  indecisive,  is  soon  determined  ;  it  is  borne  towards  the 
object  that  has  pleased  us,  whose  absence  makes  us  suffer.  This 
movement  of  the  soul,  more  or  less  vivid,  is  desire. 

Is  there  in  desire  any  of  the  characters  of  liberty  ?  What  is  it 
called  to  be  free  ?  Each  one  knows  that  he  is  free,  when  he 
knows  that  he  is  master  of  his  action,  that  he  can  begin  it,  arrest 
it,  or  continue  it  as  he  pleases.  We  are  free,  when  before  acting 
we  have  taken  the  resolution  to  act,  knowing  well  that  we  are 
able  to  take  the  opposite  resolution.  A  free  act  is  that  of  which, 
by  the  infallible  testimony  of  my  consciousness,  I  know  that  I  am 
the  cause,  for  which,  therefore,  I  regard  myself  as  responsible. 
God,  the  world,  the  body,  can  produce  in  me  a  thousand  move- 
ments ;  these  movements  may  seem  to  the  eyes  of  an  external 
observer  to  be  voluntary  acts ;  but  any  error  is  impossible  to  con- 
sciousness,— it  distinguishes  every  movement  not  voluntary,  what- 
ever it  may  be,  from  a  voluntary  act. 

True  activity  is  voluntary  and  free  activity.  Desire  is  just  the 
opposite.  Desire,  carried  to  its  culmination,  is  passion  ;  but  lan- 
guage, as  well  as  consciousness,  says  that  man  is  passive  in  pas- 
sion ;  and  the  more  vivid  passion  is,  the  more  imperative  are  its 
movements,  the  farther  is  it  from  the  type  of  true  activity  in 
which  the  soul  possesses  and  governs  itself. 


THE   ETHICS    OF    INTEREST.  235 

I  am  no  more  free  in  desire  than  in  the  sensation  that  precedes 
and  determines  it.  If  an  agreeable  object  is  presented  to  me,  am 
I  able  not  to  be  agreeably  moved  ?  If  it  is  a  painful  object,  am 
I  able  not  to  be  painfully  moved  ?  And  so,  when  this  agreeable 
sensation  has  disappeared,  if  memory  and  imagination  remind 
me  of  it,  is  it  in  my  power  not  to  suffer  from  no  longer  experi- 
encing it,  is  it  in  my  power  not  to  feel  the  need  of  experiencing 
it  again,  and  to  desire  more  or  less  ardently  the  object  that  alone 
can  appease  the  disquietude  and  suffering  of  my  soul  ? 

Observe  well  what  takes  place  within  you  in  desire ;  you  recog- 
nize in  it  a  blind  emotion,  that,  without  any  deliberation  on  your 
part,  and  without  the  intervention  of  your  will,  rises  or  falls,  in- 
creases or  diminishes.  One  does  not  desire,  and  cease  to  desire, 
according  to  his  will. 

Will  often  combats  desire,  as  it  often  also  yields  to  it ;  it  is 
not,  therefore,  desire.  We  do  not  reproach  the  sensations  that 
objects  produce,  nor  even  the  desires  that  these  sensations  engen- 
der ;  we  do  reproach  ourselves  for  the  consent  of  the  will  to  these 
desires,  and  the  acts  that  follow,  for  these  acts  are  in  our  power. 

Desire  is  so  little  will,  that  it  often  abolishes  it,  and  leads  man 
into  acts  that  he  does  not  impute  to  himself,  for  they  are  not 
voluntary.  It  is  even  the  refuge  of  many  of  the  accused ;  they 
lay  their  faults  to  the  violence  of  desire  and  passion,  which  have 
not  left  them  masters  of  themselves. 

If  desire  were  the  basis  of  will,  the  stronger  the  desire  the  freer 
we  should  be.  Evidently  the  contrary  is  true.  As  the  violence 
of  desire  increases,  the  dominion  of  man  over  himself  decreases ; 
and  as  desire  is  weakened  and  passion  extinguished,  man  repos- 
sesses himself. 

I  do  not  say  that  we  have  no  influence  over  our  desires.  That 
two  facts  differ,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  must  be  without  re- 
lation to  each  other.  By  removing  certain  objects,  or  even  by 
merely  diverting  our  thoughts  away  from  the  pleasure  that  they 
can  give  us,  we  are  able,  to  a  certain  extent,  to  turn  aside  and 
elude  the  sensible  effects  of  these  objects,  and  escape  the  desire 


236  LECTURE    TWELFTH. 

which  they  might  excite  in  us.  One  may  also,  by  surrounding 
himself  with  certain  objects,  in  some  sort  manage  himself,  and 
produce  in  himself  sensations  and  desires  which  for  that  are  not 
more  voluntary  than  would  be  the  impression  made  upon  us  by 
a  stone  with  which  we  should  strike  ourselves.  By  yielding  to 
these  desires,  we  lend  them  a  new  force,  and  we  moderate  them 
by  a  skilful  resistance.  One  even  has  some  power  over  the  organs 
of  the  body,  and,  by  applying  to  them  an  appropriate  regimen, 
he  goes  so  far  as  to  modify  their  functions.  All  this  proves  that 
there  is  in  us  a  power  different  from  the  senses  and  desire,  which, 
without  disposing  of  them,  sometimes  exercises  over  them  an  in- 
direct authority. 

Will  also  directs  intelligence,  although  it  is  not  intelligence. 
To  will  and  to  know  are  two  things  essentially  different.  We  do 
not  judge  as  we  will,  but  according  to  the  necessary  laws  of  the 
judgment  and  the  understanding.  The  knowledge  of  truth  is  not 
a  resolution  of  the  will.  It  is  not  the  will  that  declares,  for  ex- 
ample, that  body  is  extended,  that  it  is  in  space,  that  every  phe- 
nomenon has  a  cause,  etc.  Yet  the  will  has  much  power  over 
intelligence.  It  is  freely  and  voluntarily  that  we  work,  that  we 
give  attention,  for  a  longer  or  a  shorter  time,  more  or  less  intense, 
to  certain  things ;  consequently,  it  is  the  will  that  develops  and 
increases  intelligence,  as  it  might  let  it  languish  and  become  ex- 
tinguished. It  must,  then,  be  avowed  that  there  is  in  us  a 
supreme  power  that  presides  over  all  our  faculties,  over  intelli- 
gence as  well  as  sensibility,  which  is  distinguished  from  them, 
and  is  mingled  with  them,  governs  them,  or  leaves  them  to  their 
natural  development,  making  appear,  even  in  its  absence,  the 
character  that  belongs  to  it,  since  the  man  that  is  deprived  of  it 
avows  that  he  is  no  longer  master  of  himself,  that  he  is  not  him- 
self, so  true  is  it  that  human  personality  resides  particularly  in 
that  prominent  power  that  is  called  the  will.1 


1  On  the  difference  between  desire,  intelligence,  and  will,  see  the  Exami- 
nation, already  cited,  of  the  Lectures  of  M.  Laromeguiert. 


THE   ETHICS   OF   INTEREST.     .  237 

Singular  destiny  of  that  power,  so  often  misconceived,  and  yet 
so  manifest !  Strange  confounding  of  will  and  desire,  wherein 
the  most  opposite  schools  meet  each  other,  Spinoza,  Malebranche, 
and  Condillac,  the  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
that  of  the  eighteenth !  One,  a  despiser  of  humanity,  by  an  ex- 
treme and  ill-understood  piety,  strips  man  of  his  own  activity,  in 
order  to  concentrate  it  in  God ;  the  other  transfers  it  to  nature. 
In  both  man  is  a  mere  instrument,  nothing  else  than  a  mode  of 
God  or  a  product  of  nature.  When  desire  is  once  taken  as  the 
type  of  human  activity,  there  is  an  end  of  all  liberty  and  person- 
ality. A  philosophy,  less  systematic,  by  conforming  itself  to  facts, 
carries  through  common  sense  to  better  results.  By  distinguish- 
ing between  the  passive  phenomenon  of  desire  and  the  power  of 
freely  determining  self,  it  restores  the  true  activity  that  charac- 
terizes human  personality.  The  will  is  the  infallible  sign  and 
the  peculiar  power  of  a  real  and  effective  being ;  for  how  could 
he  who  should  be  only  a  mode  of  another  being  find  in  his  own 
borrowed  being  a  power  capable  of  willing  and  producing  acts  of 
which  he  should  feel  himself  the  cause,  and  the  responsible  cause  ? 

If  the  philosophy  of  sensation,  by  setting  out  from  passive  phe- 
nomena, cannot  explain  true  activity,  voluntary  and  free  activity, 
we  might  regard  it  as  demonstrated  that  this  same  philosophy 
cannot  give  a  true  doctrine  of  morality,  for  all  ethics  suppose 
liberty.  In  order  to  impose  rules  of  action  on  a  being,  it  is  neces- 
sary that  this  being  should  be  capable  of  fulfilling  or  violating 
them.  What  makes  the  good  and  evil  of  an  action  is  not  the 
action  itself,  but  the  intention  that  has  determined  it.  Before 
every  equitable  tribunal,  the  crime  is  in  the  intention,  and  to  the 
intention  the  punishment  is  attached.  Where,  then,  liberty  is 
wanting,  where  there  is  nothing  but  desire  and  passion,  not  even 
a  shade  of  morality  subsists.  But  we  do  not  wish  to  reject,  by 
the  previous  question,  the  ethics  of  sensation.  We  proceed  to 
examine  in  itself  the  principle  that  they  lay  down,  and  to  show 
that  from  this  principle  can  be  deduced  neither  the  idea  of  good 
and  evil,  nor  any  of  the  moral  ideas  that  are  attached  to  it. 


238  LECTURE   TWELFTH. 

2d.  According  to  the  philosophy  of  sensation,  the  good  is 
nothing  else  than  the  useful.  By  substituting  the  useful  for  the 
agreeable,  without  changing  the  principle,  there  has  been  con- 
trived a  convenient  refuge  against  many  difficulties ;  for  it  will 
always  be  possible  to  distinguish  interest  well  understood  from 
apparent  and  vulgar  interest.  But  even  under  this  somewhat 
refined  form,  the  doctrine  that  we  are  examining  none  the  less 
destroys  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil. 

If  utility  is  the  sole  measure  of  the  goodness  of  actions,  I  must 
consider  only  one  thing  when  an  action  is  proposed  to  me  to  do, 
— what  advantages  can  result  from  it  to  me  ? 

So  I  make  the  supposition  that  a  friend,  whose  innocence  is 
known  to  me,  falls  into  disfavor  with  a  king,  or  opinion — a  mis- 
tress more  jealous  and  imperious  than  all  kings, — and  that  there 
is  danger  in  remaining  faithful  to  him  and  advantage  in  separa- 
ting myself  from  him ;  if,  on  one  side,  the  danger  is  certain,  and 
on  the  other  the  advantage  is  infallible,  it  is  clear  that  I  must 
either  abandon  my  unfortunate  friend,  or  renounce  the  principle 
of  interest — of  interest  well  understood  4 

But  it  will  be  said  to  me : — think  on  the  uncertainty  of  human 
things ;  remember  that  misfortune  may  also  overtake  you,  and 
do  not  abandon  your  friend,  through  fear  that  you  may  one  day 
be  abandoned. 

I  respond  that,  at  first,  it  is  the  future  that  is  uncertain,  but 
the  present  is  certain ;  if  I  can  reap  great  and  unmistakable  ad- 
vantages from  an  action,  it  would  be  absurd  to  sacrifice  them  to 
the  chance  of  a  possible  misfortune.  Besides,  according  to  my 
supposition,  all  the  chances  of  the  future  are  in  my  favor, — this 
is  the  hypothesis  that  we  have  made. 

Do  not  speak  to  me  of  public  opinion.  If  personal  interest  is 
the  only  rational  principle,  the  public  reason  must  be  with  me. 
If  it  were  against  me,  it  would  be  an  objection  against  the  truth 
of  the  principle.  For  how  could  a  true  principle,  rationally  ap- 
plied, be  revolting  to  the  public  conscience  ? 

Neither  oppose  to  me  remorse.     What  remorse  can  I  feel  for 


THE    ETHICS    OF  INTEREST.  239 

having  followed  the  truth,  if  the  principle  of  interest  is  in  fact 
moral  truth  ?  On  the  contrary,  I  should  feel  satisfaction  on  ac- 
count of  it. 

The  rewards  and  punishments  of  another  life  remain.  But 
how  are  we  to  believe  in  another  life,  in  a  system  that  confines 
human  consciousness  within  the  limits  of  transformed  sensation  ? 

I  have,  then,  no  motive  to  preserve  fidelity  to  a  friend.  And 
mankind  nevertheless  imposes  on  me  this  fidelity ;  and,  if  I  am 
wanting  in  it,  I  am  dishonored. 

If  happiness  is  the  highest  aim,  good  and  evil  are  not  in  the  act 
itself,  but  in  its  happy  or  unhappy  results. 

Fontenelle  seeing  a  man  led  to  punishment,  said,  "There  is  a 
man  who  has  calculated  badly."  Whence  it  follows  that,  if  this 
man,  in  doing  what  he  did,  could  have  escaped  punishment,  he 
would  have  calculated  well,  and  his  conduct  would  have  been 
laudable.  The  action  then  becomes  good  or  ill  according  to  the 
issue.  Every  act  is  of  itself  indifferent,  and  it  is  lot  that  quali- 
fies it. 

If  the  honest  is  only  the  useful,  the  genius  of  calculation  is  the 
highest  wisdom ;  it  is  even  virtue  ! 

But  this  genius  is  not  withip  the  reach  of  everybody.  It  sup- 
poses, with  long  experience  of  life,  a  sure  insight,  capable  of 
discerning  all  the  consequences  of  actions,  a  head  strong  and 
large  enough  to  embrace  and  weigh  their  different  chances.  The 
young  man,  the  ignorant,  the  poor  in  mind,  are  not  able  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  good  and  the  evil,  the  honest  and  the  dishon- 
est. And  even  in  supposing  the  most  consummate  prudence, 
what  place  remains,  in  the  profound  obscurity  of  human  things, 
for  chance  and  the  unforeseen !  In  truth,  in  the  system  of  inter- 
est well  understood,  there  must  be  great  knowledge  in  order  to 
be  an  honest  man.  Much  less  is  requisite  for  ordinary  virtue, 
whose  motto  has  always  been :  Do  what  you  ought,  let  come 
what  may.1  But  this  principle  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  the 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  p.  193 :  "  la  the  doctrine  of  interest,  every  man  seeks 
the  useful,  but  he  is  not  sure  of  attaining  it.  He  may,  by  dint  of  prudence 


24:0  LECTUfeE   TWELFTH. 

principle  of  interest.  It  is  necessary  to  choose  between  them.  If 
interest  is  the  only  principle  avowed  by  reason,  disinterestedness 
is  a  lie  and  madness,  and  literally  an  incomprehensible  monster 
in  well-ordered  human  nature. 

Nevertheless  humanity  speaks  of  disinterestedness,  and  thereby 
it  does  not  simply  mean  that  wise  selfishness  that  deprives  itself 
of  a  pleasure  for  a  surer,  more  delicate,  or  more  durable  pleasure. 
No  one  has  ever  believed  that  it  was  the  nature  or  the  degree  of 
the  pleasure  sought  that  constituted  disinterestedness.  This  name 
is  awarded  only  to  the  sacrifice  of  an  interest,  whatever  it  may 
be,  to  a  motive  free  from  all  interest.  And  the  human  race,  not 
only  thus  understands  disinterestedness,  but  it  believes  that 
such  a  disinterestedness  exists ;  it  believes  the  human  soul  capa- 
ble of  it.  It  admires  the  devotedness  of  Regulus,  because  it  does 
not  see  what  interest  could  have  impelled  that  great  man  to  go 
far  from  his  country  to  seek,  among  cruel  enemies,  a  frightful 
death,  when  he  might  have  lived  tranquil  and  even  honored  in 
the  midst  of  his  family  and  his  fellow-citizens. 

But  glory,  it  will  be  said,  the  passion  of  glory  inspired  Regu- 
lus ;  it  is,  then,  interest  still  that  explains  the  apparent  heroism 

and  profound  combinations,  increase  in  his  favor  the  chances  of  success  ;  it 
is  impossible  that  there  should  not  remain  some  chances  against  him ;  he 
never  pursues,  then,  any  thing  but  a  probable  result.  On  the  contrary,  in 
the  doctrine  of  duty,  I  aui  always  sure  of  obtaining  the  last  end  that  I  pro- 
pose to  myself,  moral  good.  I  risk  my  life  to  save  my  fellow ;  if,  through 
mischance,  I  miss  this  end,  there  is  another  which  does  not,  which  cannot, 
escape  me, — I  have  aimed  at  the  good,  I  have  been  successful.  Moral  good, 
being  especially  in  the  virtuous  intention,  is  always  in  my  power  and  within 
my  reach ;  as  to  the  material  good  that  can  result  from  the  action  itself, 
Providence  alone  disposes  of  it.  Let  us  felicitate  ourselves  that  Providence 
has  placed  our  moral  destiny  in  our  own  hands,  by  making  it  depend  upon 
the  good  and  not  upon  the  useful.  The.  will,  in  order  to  act  in  the  sad  trials 
of  life,  has  need  of  being  sustained  by  certainty.  Who  would  be  disposed 
to  give  his  blood  for  an  uncertain  end  ?  Success  is  a  complicated  problem, 
that,  in  order  to  be  solved,  exacts  all  the  power  of  tEe  calculus  of  probabili- 
ties. What  labor  and  what  uncertainties  does  such  a  calculus  involve ! 
Doubt  is  a  very  sad  preparation  for  action.  But  when  one  proposes  before 
all  to  do  his  duty,  he  acts  without  any  perplexity.  Do  what  you  ought,  let 
come  what  may,  is  a  motto  that  does  not  deceive.  With  such  an  end,  we 
are  sure  of  never  pursuing  it  in  vain." 


THE   ETHICS    OF    INTEREST.  241 

of  the  old  Roman.  Admit,  then,  that  this  manner  of  understand- 
ing his  interest  is  even  ridiculously  absurd,  and  that  heroes  are 
very  unskilful  and  inconsistent  egoists.  Instead  of  erecting  stat- 
ues, with  the  deceived  human  race,  to  Regulus,  d'Assas,  and  St. 
Vincent  de  Paul,  true  philosophy  must  send  them  to  the  Petites- 
Maisons,  that  a  good  regime  may  cure  them  of  generosity,  charity, 
and  greatness  of  soul,  and  restore  them  to  the  sane  state,  the  nor- 
mal state,  the  state  in  which  man  only  thinks  of  himself,  and 
knows  no  other  law,  no  other  principle  of  action  than  his  interest. 

3d.  If  there  is  no  liberty,  if  there  is  no  essential  distinction 
between  good  and  evil,  if  there  is  only  interest  well  or  ill  under- 
stood, there  can  be  no  obligation. 

It  is  at  first  very  evident  that  obligation  supposes  a  being  ca- 
pable of  fulfilling  it,  that  duty  is  applied  only  to  a  free  being. 
Then  the  nature  of  obligation  is  such,  that  if  we  are  delinquent 
in  fulfilling  it,  we  feel  ourselves  culpable,  whilst  if,  instead  of  under- 
standing our  interest  well,  we  have  understood  it  ill,  there  follows 
only  a  single  thing,  that  we  are  unfortunate.  Are,  then,  being  cul- 
pable and  being  unfortunate  the  same  thing  ?  These  are  two  ideas 
radically  different.  You  may  advise  me  to  understand  my  interest 
well,  under  penalty  of  falling  into  misfortune ;  you  cannot  command 
me  to  see  clearly  in  regard  to  my  interest  under  penalty  of  crime. 

Imprudence  has  never  been  considered  a  crime.  When  it  is 
morally  accused,  it  is  much  less  as  being  wrong  than  as  attesting 
vices  of  the  soul,  lightness,  presumption,  feebleness. 

As  we  have  said,  our  true  interest  is  often  most  difficult  of 
discernment.  Obligation  is  always  immediate  and  manifest.  In 
vain  passion  and  desire  combat  it ;  in  vain  the  reasoning  that 
passion  trains  for  its  attendance,  like  a  docile  slave,  tries  to 
smother  it  under  a  mass  of  sophisms  :  the  instinct  of  conscience, 
a  cry  of  the  soul,  an  intuition  of  reason,  different  from  reasoning, 
is  sufficient  to  repel  all  sophisms,  and  make  obligation  appear. 

However  pressing  may  be  the  solicitations  of  interest,  we  may 
always  enter  into  contest  and  arrangement  with  it.  There  are  a 
thousand  ways  of  being  -happy.  You  assure  me  that,  by  cau- 

11 


24:2  LECTURE    TWELFTH. 

ducting  myself  in  such  a  manner,  I  shall  arrive  at  fortune.  Yes, 
but  I  love  repose  more  than  fortune,  and  with  happiness  alone 
in  view,  activity  is  not  better  than  sloth.  Nothing  is  more  diffi- 
cult than  to  advise  any  one  in  regard  to  his  interest,  nothing  is 
easier  than  to  advise  him  in  regard  to  honor. 

After  all,  in  practice,  the  useful  is  resolved  into  the  agreeable, 
that  is  to  say,  into  pleasure.  Now,  in  regard  to  pleasure,  every 
thing  depends  on  humor  and  temperament.  When  there  is 
neither  good  nor  evil  in  itself,  there  are  no  pleasures  more  or 
less  noble,  more  or  less  elevated ;  there  are  only  pleasures  that 
are  more  or  less  agreeable  to  us.  Every  thing  depends  on  the 
nature  of  each  one.  This  is  the  reason  why  interest  is  so  capri- 
cious. Each  one  understands  it  as  it  pleases  him,  because  each 
one  is  the  judge  of  what  pleases  him.  One  is  more  moved  by 
pleasures  of  the  senses ;  another  by  pleasures  of  mind  and 
heart.  To  the  latter,  the  passion  of  glory  takes  the  place  of 
pleasures  of  the  senses ;  to  the  former,  the  pleasure  of  dominion 
appears  much  superior  to  that  of  glory.  Each  man  has  his  own 
passions,  each  man,  then,  has  his  own  way  of  understanding  his 
interest ;  and  even  my  interest  of  to-day  is  not  my  interest  of  to- 
morrow. The  revolutions  of  health,  age,  and  events  greatly 
modify  our  tastes,  our  humors.  We  are  ourselves  perpetually 
changing,  and  with  us  change  our  desires  and  our  interests. 

It  is  not  so  with  obligation.  It  exists  not,  or  it  is  absolute. 
The  idea  of  obligation  implies  that  of  something  inflexible.  That 
alone  is  a  duty  from  which  one  cannot  be  loosed  under  any  pre- 
text, and  is,  by  the  same  title,  a  duty  for  all.  There  is  one 
thing  before  which  all  the  caprices  of  my  mind,  of  my  imagina- 
tion, of  my  sensibility  must  disappear, — the  idea  of  the  good 
with  the  obligation  which  it  involves.  To  this  supreme  com- 
mand I  can  oppose  neither  my  humor,  nor  circumstances,  nor 
even  difficulties.  This  law  admits  of  no  delay,  no  accommoda- 
tion, no  excuse.  When  it  speaks,  be  it  to  you  or  me,  in  what- 
ever place,  under  whatever  circumstance,  in  whatever  disposition 
we  may  be,  it  only  remains  for  us  to  obey.  We  are  able  not  to 


THE   ETHICS   OF   INTEREST.  243 

obey,  for  we  are  free ;  but  every  disobedience  to  the  law  appears 
to  ourselves  a  fault  more  or  less  grave,  a  bad  use  of  our  liberty. 
And  the  violated  law  has  its  immediate  penal  sanction  in  the 
remorse  that  it  inflicts  upon  us. 

The  only  penalty  that  is  brought  upon  us  by  the  counsels  of 
prudence,  comprehended  more  or  less  well,  followed  more  or  less 
well,  is,  in  the  final  account,  more  or  less  happiness  or  unhappi- 
ness.  Now  I  pray  you,  am  I  obligated  to  be  happy  ?  Can 
obligation  depend  upon  happiness,  that  is  to  say,  on  a  thing  that 
it  is  equally  impossible  for  me  to  always  seek  and  obtain  at  will  ? 
If  I  am  obligated,  it  must  be  in  my  power  to  fulfil  the  obligation 
imposed.  But  my  liberty  has  but  little  power  over  my  happi- 
ness, which  depends  upon  a  thousand  circumstances  independent 
of  me,  whilst  it  is  all  in  all  in  regard  to  virtue,  for  virtue  is  only 
an  employment  of  liberty.  Moreover,  happiness  is  in  itself, 
morally,  neither  better  nor  worse  than  unhappiness.  If  I  under- 
stand my  interest  badly,  I  am  punished  for  it  by  regret,  not  by 
remorse.  Unhappiness  can  overwhelm  me  ;  it  does  not  disgrace 
me,  if  it  is  not  the  consequence  of  some  vice  of  the  soul. 

Not  that  I  would  renew  stoicism  and  say  to  suffering,  Thou 
art  no  evil.  No,  I  earnestly  advise  man  to  escape  suffering  as 
much  as  he  can,  to  understand  well  his  interest,  to  shun  unhap- 
piness and  seek  happiness.  I  only  wish  to  establish  that  happi- 
ness is  one  thing  and  virtue  another,  that  man  necessarily  aspires 
after  happiness,  but  that  he  is  only  obligated  to  virtue,  and  that 
consequently,  by  the  side  of  and  above  interest  well  understood 
is  a  moral  law,  that  is  to  say,  as  consciousness  attests,  and  the 
whole  human  race  avows,  an  imperative  prescription  of  which 
one  cannot  voluntarily  divest  himself  without  crime  and  shame. 

4th.  If  interest  does  not  account  for  the  idea  of  duty,  by  a 
necessary  consequence,  it  does  not  more  account  for  that  of 
right ;  for  duty  and  right  reciprocally  suppose  each  other. 

Might  and  right  must  not  be  confounded.  A  being  might 
have  immense  power,  that  of  the  whirlwind,  of  the  thunderbolt, 
that  of  one  of  the  forces  of  nature ;  if  liberty  is  not  joined  to  it, 


244:  LECTURE   TWELFTH. 

it  is  only  a  fearful  and  terrible  thing,  it  is  not  a  person, — it  may 
inspire,  in  the  highest  degree,  fear  and  hope, — it  has  no  right  to 
respect ;  one  has  no  duties  towards  it. 

Duty  and  right  are  brothers.     Their  common  mother  is  liberty. 

They  are  born  at  the  same  time,  are  developed  and  perish 
together.  It  might  even  be  said  that  duty  and  right  make  one, 
and  are  the  same  being,  having  a  face  on  two  different  sides. 
What,  in  fact,  is  my  right  to  your  respect,  except  the  duty  you 
have  to  respect  me,  because  I  am  a  free  being  ?  But  you  are 
yourself  a  free  being,  and  the  foundation  of  my  right  and  your 
duty  becomes  for  you  the  foundation  of  an  equal  right,  and  in 
me  of  an  equal  duty.1 

I  say  equal  with  the  exactest  equality,  for  liberty,  and  liberty 
alone,  is  equal  to  itself.  All  the  rest  is  diverse ;  by  all  the  rest 
men  differ;  for  resemblance  implies  difference.  As  there  are 
no  two  leaves  that  are  the  same,  there  are  no  two  men  absolutely 
the  same  in  body,  senses,  mind,  heart.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
conceive  of  difference  between  the  free  will  of  one  man  and  the 
free  will  of  another.  I  am  free  or  I  am  not  free.  If  I  am  free, 
I  am  free  as  much  as  you,  and  you  are  as  much  as  I.  There  is 
not  in  this  more  or  less.  One  is  a  moral  person  as  much  as,  and 
by  the  same  title  as  another  moral  person.  Volition,  which  is 
the  seat  of  liberty,  is  the  same  in  all  men.  It  may  have  in  its 
service  different  instruments,  powers  different,  and  consequently 
unequal,  whether  material  or  spiritual.  But  the  powers  of  which 
will  disposes  are  not  it,8  for  it  does  not  dispose  of  them  in  an 
absolute  manner.  The  only  free  power  is  that  of  will,  but  that 
is  essentially  so.  If  will  recognizes  laws,  these  laws  are  not 
motives,  springs  that  move  it, — they  are  ideal  laws,  that  of  jus- 
tice, for  example  ;  will  recognizes  this  law,  and  at  the  same  time 
it  has  the  consciousness  of  the  ability  to  fulfil  it  or  to  break  it, 
doing  the  one  only  with  the  consciousness  of  the  ability  to  do  the 


1  See  the  development  of  the  idea  of  right,  lectures  14  and  15. 
*  See  lecture  14,  Theory  of  liberty. 


THE   ETHICS   OF  INTEREST.  2±5 

other,  and  reciprocally.  Therein  is  the  type  of  liberty,  and  at 
the  same  time  of  true  equality ;  every  thing  else  is  false.  It  is 
not  true  that  men  have  the  right  to  be  equally  rich,  beautiful, 
robust,  to  enjoy  equally,  in  a  word,  to  be  equally  fortunate  ;  for 
they  originally  and  necessarily  differ  in  all  those  points  of  their 
nature  that  correspond  to  pleasure,  to  riches,  to  good  fortune. 
God  has  made  us  with  powers  unequal  in  regard  to  all  these 
things.  Here  equality  is  against  nature  and  eternal  order ;  for 
diversity  and  difference,  as  well  as  harmony,  are  the  law  of  cre- 
ation. To  dream  of  such  an  equality  is  a  strange  mistake,  a 
deplorable  error.  False  equality  is  the  idol  of  ill-formed  minds 
and  hearts,  of  disquiet  and  ambitious  egoism.  True  equality 
accepts  without  shame  all  the  exterior  inequalities  that  God  has 
made,  and  that  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  man  not  only  to  efface, 
but  even  to  modify.  Noble  liberty  has  nothing  to  settle  with 
the  furies  of  pride  and  envy.  As  it  does  not  aspire  to  domina- 
tion, so,  and  by  virtue  of  the  same  principle,  it  does  not  more 
aspire  to  a  chimerical  equality  of  mind,  of  beauty,  of  fortune,  of 
enjoyments.  Moreover,  such  an  equality,  were  it  possible,  would 
be  of  little  value  in  its  own  eyes ;  it  asks  something  much  greater 
than  pleasure,  fortune,  rank,  to  wit,  respect.  Respect,  an  equal 
respect  of  the  sacred  right  of  being  free  in  every  thing  that  consti- 
tutes the  person,  that  person  which  is  truly  man ;  this  is  what  lib- 
erty and  with  it  true  equality  claim,  or  rather  imperatively  demand. 
Respect  must  not  be  confounded  with  homage.  I  render  homage 
to  genius  and  beauty.  I  respect  humanity  alone,  and  by  that  I 
mean  all  free  natures,  for  every  thing  that  is  not  free  in  man  is 
foreign  to  him.  Man  is  therefore  the  equal  of  man  precisely  in 
every  thing  that  makes  him  man,  and  the  reign  of  true  equality 
exacts  on  the  part  of  all  only  the  same  respect  for  what  each 
one  possesses  equally  in  himself,  both  young  and  old,  both  ugly 
and  beautiful,  both  rich  and  poor,  both  the  man  of  genius  and 
the  mediocre  man,  both  woman  and  man,  whatever  has  conscious- 
ness of  being  a  person  and  not  a  thing.  The  equal  respect  of 
common  liberty  is  the  principle  at  once  of  duty  and  right ;  it  is 


LECTURE    TWELFTH. 

the  virtue  of  each  and  the  security  of  all ;  by  an  admirable 
agreement,  it  is  dignity  among  men,  and  accordingly  peace  on 
«arth.  Such  is  the  great  and  holy  image  of  liberty  and  equality, 
which  has  made  the  hearts  of  our  fathers  beat,  and  the  hearts  of 
all  virtuous  and  enlightened  men,  of  all  true  friends  of  humanity. 
Such  is  the  ideal  that  true  philosophy  pursues  across  the  ages, 
from  the  generous  dreams  of  Plato  to  the  solid  conceptions  of 
Montesquieu,  from  the  first  free  legislation  of  the  smallest  city  of 
Greece  to  our  declaration  of  rights,  and  the  immortal  works  of 
the  constituent  Assembly. 

The  philosophy  of  sensation  starts  with  a  principle  that  con- 
demns it  to  consequences  as  disastrous  as  those  of  the  principle 
of  liberty  are  beneficent.  By  confounding  will  with  desire,  it 
justifies  passion,  which  is  desire  in  all  its  force — passion,  which  is 
precisely  the  opposite  of  liberty.  It  accordingly  unchains  all  the 
desires  and  all  the  passions,  it  gives  full  rein  to  imagination  and 
the  heart ;  it  renders  each  man  much  less  happy  on  account  of 
what  he  possesses,  than  miserable  on  account  of  what  he  lacks  ; 
it  makes  him  regard  his  neighbors  with  an  eye  of  envy  and  con- 
tempt, and  continually  pushes  society  towards  anarchy  or  tyranny. 
Whither,  in  fact,  would  you  have  interest  lead  in  the  train  of  de- 
sire ?  My  desire  is  certainly  to  be  the  most  fortunate  possible. 
My  interest  is  to  seek  to  be  so  by  all  means,  whatever  they  may 
be,  under  the  single  reserve  that  they  be  not  contrary  to  their 
end.  If  I  am  born  the  first  of  men,  the  richest,  the  most  beauti 
ful,  the  most  powerful,  etc.,  I  shall  do  every  thing  to  preserve  the 
advantages  I  have  received.  If  fate  has  given  me  birth  in  a  rank 
little  elevated,  with  a  moderate  fortune,  limited  talents,  and  im- 
mense desires — for  it  cannot  too  often  be  repeated,  desire  of  every 
kind  aspires  after  the  infinite — I  shall  do  every  thing  to  rise  above 
the  crowd,  in  order  to  increase  my  power,  my  fortune,  my  joys. 
Unfortunate  on  account  of  my  position  in  this  world,  in  order  to 
change  it,  I  dream  of,  and  call  for  revolutions,  it  is  true,  without 
enthusiasm  and  political  fanaticism,  for  interest  alone  does  not 
produce  these  noble  follies,  but  under  the  sharp  goad  of  vanity 

I 


THE   ETHICS    OF    INTEREST.  247 

and  ambition.  Thereby,  then,  I  arrive  at  fortune  and  power ; 
interest,  then,  claims  security,  as  before  it  invoked  agitation.  The 
need  of  security  brings  me  back  from  anarchy  to  the  need  of 
order,  provided  order  be  to  my  profit ;  and  I  become  a  tyrant,  if 
I  can,  or  the  gilt  servant  of  a  tyrant.  Against  anarchy  and  tyran- 
ny, those  two  scourges  of  liberty,  the  only  rampart  is  the  universal 
sentiment  of  right,  founded  on  the  firm  distinction  between  good 
and  evil,  the  just  and  the  useful,  the  honest  and  the  agreeable, 
virtue  and  interest,  will  and  desire,  sensation  and  conscience. 

5.  Let  us  again  signalize  one  of  the  necessary  consequences  of 
the  doctrine  of  interest. 

A  free  being,  in  possession  of  the  sacred  rule  of  justice,  cannot 
violate  it,  knowing  that  he  should  and  may  follow  it,  without 
immediately  recognizing  that  he  merits  punishment.  The  idea 
of  punishment  is  not  an  artificial  idea,  borrowed  from  the  pro- 
found calculations  of  legislators ;  legislations  rest  upon  the  natural 
idea  of  punishment.  This  idea,  corresponding  to  that  of  liberty 
and  justice,  is  necessarily  wanting  where  the  former  two  do  not 
exist.  Does  he  who  obeys,  and  fatally  obeys  his  desires,  by  the 
attraction  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  supposing  that,  without  any 
other  motive  than  that  of  interest,  he  does  an  act  conformed,  ex- 
ternally at  least,  to  the  rule  of  justice,  merit  any  thing  by  doing 
such  an  action  ?  Not  the  least  in  the  world.  Conscience  at- 
tributes to  him  no  merit,  and  no  one  owes  him  thanks  or  recom- 
pense, for  he  only  thinks  of  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he 
injures  others  in  wishing  to  serve  himself,  he  does  not  feel  culpa- 
ble, and  no  one  can  say  to  him  that  he  has  merited  punishment. 
A  free  being  who  wills  what  he  does,  who  has  a  law,  and  can 
conform  to  it,  or  break  it,  is  alone  responsible  for  his  acts.  But 
what  responsibility  can  there  be  in  the  absence  of  liberty  and  a 
recognized  and  accepted  rule  of  justice  ?  The  man  of  sensation 
and  desire  tends  to  his  own  good  under  the  law  of  interest,  as 
the  stone  is  drawn  towards  the  centre  of  the  earth  under  the  law 
of  gravitation,  as  the  needle  points  to  the  pole.  Man  may  err  in 
the  pursuit  of  his  interest.  In  this  case,  what  is  to  be  done  ? 


24:8  LECTURE    TWELFTH. 

As  it  seems,  to  put  him  again  in  the  right  way.  Instead  of  that, 
he  is  punished.  And  for  what,  I  pray  you  ?  For  being  deceived. 
But  error  merits  advice,  not  punishment.  Punishment  has,  in 
the  system  of  interest,  no  more  the  sanction  of  moral  sense  than 
recompense.  Punishment  is  only  an  act  of  personal  defence  on 
the  part  of  society ;  it  is  an  example  which  it  gives,  in  order  to 
inspire  a  salutary  terror.  These  motives  are  excellent,  if  it  be 
added  that  this  punishment  is  just  in  itself,  that  it  is  merited,  and 
that  it  is  legitimately  applied  to  the  action  committed.  Omit 
that,  and  the  other  motives  lose  their  authority,  and  there  remains 
only  an  exercise  of  force,  destitute  of  all  morality.  Then  the  cul- 
prit is  not  punished ;  he  is  smitten,  or  even  put  to  death,  as  the 
animal  that  injures  instead  of  serving  is  put  to  death  without 
scruple.  The  condemned  does  not  bow  his  head  to  the  whole- 
some reparation  due  to  justice,  but  to  the  weight  of  irons  or  the 
stroke  of  the  axe.  The  chastisement  is  not  a  legitimate  satisfac- 
tion, an  expiation  which,  comprehended  by  the  culprit,  reconciles 
him  in  his  own  eyes  with  the  order  that  he  has  violated.  It  is  a 
storm  that  he  could  not  escape ;  it  is  the  thunder-bolt  that  falls 
upon  him ;  it  is  a  force  more  powerful  than  his  own,  which  com- 
passes and  overthrows  him.  The  appearance  of  public  chastise- 
ments acts,  without  doubt,  upon  the  imagination  of  peoples  ;  but 
it  does  not  enlighten  their  reason  and  speak  to  their  conscience ; 
it  intimidates  them,  perhaps  ;  it  does  not  soften  them.  So  recom- 
pense is  only  an  additional  attraction,  added  to  all  the  others. 
As,  properly  speaking,  there  is  no  merit,  recompense  is  simply  an 
advantage  that  one  desires,  that  is  striven  for  and  obtained  with- 
out attaching  to  it  any  moral  idea.  Thus  is  degraded  and 
effaced  the  great  institution,  natural  and  divine,  of  the  recom- 
pense of  virtue  by  happiness,  and  of  reparation  for  a  fault  by  pro- 
portionate suffering.1 

We  may  then  draw  the  conclusion,  without  fear  of  its  being 
contradicted  either  by  analysis  or  dialectics,  that  the  doctrine  of 

1  See  the  preceding  lecture,  and  lectures  14  and  15. 


THE   ETHICS   OF   INTEREST.  249 

interest  is  incompatible  with  the  most  certain  facts,  with  the 
strongest  convictions  of  humanity.  Let  us  add,  that  this  doctrine 
is  not  less  incompatible  with  the  hope  of  another  world,  where 
the  principle  of  justice  will  be  better  realized  than  in  this. 

I  will  not  seek  whether  the  sensualistic  metaphysics  can  arrive 
at  an  infinite  being,  author  of  the  universe  and  man.  I  am  well 
persuaded  that  it  cannot.  For  every  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God  supposes  in  the  human  mind  principles  of  which  sensation 
renders  no  account, — for  example,  the  universal  and  necessary 
principle  of  causality,  without  which  I  should  have  no  need  of 
seeking,  no  power  of  finding  the  cause  of  whatever  exists.1  All 
that  I  wish  to  establish  here  is,  that  in  the  system  of  interest, 
man,  not  possessing  any  truly  moral  attribute,  has  no  right  to 
put  in  God  that  of  which  he  finds  no  trace  either  in  the  world  or 
in  himself.  The  God  of  the  ethics  of  interest  must  be  analogous 
to  the  man  of  these  same  ethics.  How  could  they  attribute  to 
him  the  justice  and  the  love — I  mean  disinterested  love — of  which 
they  cannot  have  the  least  idea  ?  The  God  that  they  can  admit 
loves  himself,  and  loves  only  himself.  And  reciprocally,  not  con- 
sidering him  as  the  supreme  principle  of  charity  and  justice,  we 
can  neither  love  nor  honor  him,  and  the  only  worship  that  we 
can  render  him,  is  that  of  the  fear  with  which  his  omnipotence 
inspires  us. 

What  holy  hope  could  we  then  found  upon  such  a  God  ?  And 
we  who  have  some  time  grovelled  upon  this  earth,  thinking  only 
of  ourselves,  seeking  only  pleasure  and  a  pitiable  happiness,  what 
sufferings  nobly  borne  for  justice,  what  generous  efforts  to  main- 
tain and  develop  the  dignity  of  our  soul,  what  virtuous  affections 
for  other  souls,  can  we  offer  to  the  Father  of  humanity  as  titles 
to  his  merciful  justice  ?  The  principle  that  most  persuades  the 
human  race  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  still  the  necessary 
principle  of  merit  and  demerit,  which,  not  finding  here  below  its 
exact  satisfaction,  and  yet  under  the  necessity  of  finding  it,  in- 


1  1st  part,  lecture  1. 
11* 


250  LECTUEE   TWELFTH. 

spires  us  to  call  upon  God  for  its  satisfaction,  who  has  not  put  in 
our  hearts  the  law  of  justice  to  violate  it  himself  in  regard  to  us.1 
Now,  we  have  just  seen  that  the  ethics  of  interest  destroy  the 
principle  of  merit  and  demerit,  both  in  this  world,  and  above  all, 
in  the  world  to  come.  Accordingly,  there  is  no  regard  beyond 
this  world, — no  recourse  to  an  all-powerful  judge,  wholly  just  and 
wholly  good,  against  the  sports  of  fortune  and  the  imperfections 
of  human  justice.  Every  thing  is  completed  for  man  between 
birth  and  death,  in  spite  of  the  instincts  and  presentiments  of  his 
heart,  and  even  the  principles  of  his  reason. 

The  disciples  of  Helvetius  will,  perhaps,  claim  the  glory  of 
having  freed  humanity  from  the  fears  and  hopes  that  turn  it  aside 
from  its  true  interests.  It  is  a  service  which  mankind  will  appre- 
ciate. But  since  they  confine  our  whole  destiny  to  this  world, 
let  us  demand  of  them  what  lot  so  worthy  of  envy  they  have  in 
reserve  for  us  here,  what  social  order  they  charge  with  our  good 
fortune,  what  politics,  in  fine,  are  derived  from  their  ethics.8 

You  already  know.  We  have  demonstrated  that  the  philoso- 
phy of  sensation  knows  neither  true  liberty  nor  true  right.  What, 
in  fact,  is  will  for  this  philosophy  ?  It  is  desire.  What,  then,  is 
right  ?  The  power  of  satisfying  desires.  On  this  score,  man  is 
not  free,  and  right  is  might. 

Once  more,  nothing  pertains  less  to  man  than  desire.  Desire 
comes  of  need  which  man  does  not  make,  which  he  submits  to. 
He  submits  in  the  same  way  to  desire.  To  reduce  will  to  desire 
is  to  annihilate  liberty ;  it  is  worse  still,  it  is  to  put  it  where  it  is 
not ;  it  is  to  create  a  mendacious  liberty  that  becomes  an  instru- 
ment of  crime  and  misery.  To  call  man  to  such  a  liberty  is  to 
open  his  soul  to  infinite  desires,  which  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
satisfy.  Desire  is  in  its  nature  without  limits,  and  our  power  is 
very  limited.  If  we  were  alone  in  this  world,  we  should  even 


1  See  lecture  16. 

2  On  the  politics  that  are  derived  from  the  philosophy  of  sensation,  see  the 
four  lectures  that  we  devoted  to  the  exposition  and  refutation  of  the  doctrine 
of  Hobbes,  vol.  iii.  of  the  1st  Series. 


THE   ETHICS   OF   INTEREST.  251 

then  be  much  troubled  to  satisfy  our  desires.  But  we  press 
against  each  other  with  immense  desires,  and  limited,  diverse,  and 
unequal  powers.  When  right  is  the  force  that  is  in  each  of  us, 
equality  of  rights  is  a  chimera, — all  rights  are  unequal,  since  all 
forces  are  unequal  and  can  never  cease  to  be  so.  It  is,  therefore, 
necessary  to  renounce  equality  as  well  as  liberty ;  or  if  one  invents 
a  false  equality  as  well  as  a  false  liberty,  he  puts  humanity  in 
pursuit  of  a  phantom. 

Such  are  the  social  elements  that  the  ethics  of  interest  give  to 
politics.  From  such  elements  I  defy  all  the  politics  of  the  school 
of  sensation  and  interest  to  produce  a  single  day  of  liberty  and 
happiness  for  the  human  race. 

When  right  is  might,  the  natural  state  of  men  among  them- 
selves, is  war.  All  desiring  the  same  things,  they  are  all  neces- 
sarily enemies ;  and  in  this  war,  woe  to  the  feeble,  to  the  feeble 
in  body  and  the  feeble  in  mind !  The  stronger  are  the  masters 
by  perfect  right.  Since  right  is  might,  the  feeble  may  com- 
plain of  nature  that  has  not  made  them  strong,  and  not  com- 
plain of  the  strong  man  who  uses  his  right  in  oppressing 
them.  The  feeble  then  call  deception  to  their  aid;  and  it  is 
in  this  strife  between  cunning  and  force  that  humanity  combats 
with  itself. 

Yes,  if  there  are  only  needs,  desires,  passions,  interests,  with 
different  forces  pitted  against  each  other,  war,  a  war  sometimes 
declared  and  bloody,  sometimes  silent  and  full  of  meannesses, 
is  in  the  nature  of  things.  No  social  art  can  change  this  na- 
ture,— it  may  be  more  or  less  covered  ;  it  always  reappears, 
overcomes  and  rends  the  veil  with  which  a  mendacious  legisla- 
tion envelops  it.  Dream,  then,  of  liberty  for  beings  that  are 
not  free,  of  equality  between  beings  that  are  essentially  dif- 
ferent, of  respect  for  rights  where  there  is  no  right,  and  of  the 
establishment  of  justice  on  an  indestructible  foundation  of  in- 
imical passions !  From  such  a  foundation  can  spring  only  end- 
less troubles  or  oppression,  or  rather  all  these  evils  together  in  a 
necessary  circle. 


252  LECTURE    TWELFfH. 

This  fatal  circle  can  be  broken  only  by  the  aid  of  principles 
which  all  the  metamorphoses  of  sensation  do  not  engender,  and 
for  which  interest  cannot  account,  which  none  the  less  subsist  to 
the  honor  and  for  the  safety  of  humanity.  These  principles  are 
those  that  time  has  little  by  little  drawn  from  Christianity  in 
order  to  give  them  for  the  guidance  of  modern  societies.  You 
will  find  them  written  in  the  glorious  declaration  of  rights  that  for- 
ever broke  the  monarchy  of  Louis  XV.,  and  prepared  the  consti- 
tutional monarchy.  They  are  in  the  charter  that  governs  us,  in 
our  laws,  in  our  institutions,  in  our  manners,  in  the  air  that  we 
breathe.  They  serve  at  once  as  foundations  for  our  society  and 
the  new  philosophy  necessary  to  a  new  order.1 

Perhaps  you  will  ask  me  how,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  so 
many  distinguished,  so  many  honest  souls  could  let  themselves  be 
seduced  by  a  system  that  must  have  been  revolting  to  all  their 
sentiments.  I  will  answer  by  reminding  you  that  the  eighteenth 
century  was  an  immoderate  reaction  against  the  faults  into  which 
had  sadly  fallen  the  old  age  of  a  great  century  and  a  great  king, 
that  is  to  say,  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  the  persecu- 
tion of  all  free  and  elevated  philosophy,  a  narrow  and  suspicious 
devotion,  and  intolerance,  with  its  usual  companion,  hypocrisy. 
These  excesses  must  have  produced  opposite  excesses.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  opened  the  route  to  Mme.  de  Pompadour.  After  the 
mode  of  devotion  comes  that  of  license ;  it  takes  every  thing  by 
storm.  It  descends  from  the  court  to  the  nobility,  to  the  clergy 
even,  and  accordingly  to  the  people.  It  carried  away  the  best 


1  These  words  sufficiently  mark  the  generous  epoch  in  which  we  pronounce 
them,  without  wounding  the  authority  and  the  applauses  of  a  noble  youth, 
when  M.  de  Chateaubriand  covered  the  Eestoration  with  his  own  glory, 
when  M.  Koyer-Collard  presided  over  public  instruction,  M.  Pasquier,  M. 
Laine,  M.  de  Serre  over  justice  and  the  interior,  Marshal  St.  Cyr  over  war. 
and  the  Duke  de  Eichelieu  over  foreign  affairs,  when  the  Duke  de  Broglie 
prepared  the  true  legislation  of  the  press,  and  M.  Decazes,  the  author  of  the 
wise  and  courageous  ordinance  of  September  5,  1816,  was  at  the  head  of 
the  councils  of  the  crown ;  when  finally,  Louis  XVIII.  separated  himself, 
like  Henry  IV.,  from  his  oldest  servants  in  order  to  be  the  king  of  the  whole 
nation." 


THE   ETHICS    OF    INTEREST.  253 

spirits,  even  genius  itself.  It  put  a  foreign  philosophy  in  the  place 
of  the  national  philosophy,  culpable,  persecuted  as  it  had  been, 
for  not  being  irreconcilable  with  Christianity.  A  disciple  of 
Locke,  whom  Locke  had  discarded,  Condillac,  took  the  place  of 
Descartes,  as  the  author  of  Candide  and  la  Pucelle  had  taken  the 
place  of  Corneille  and  Bossuet,  as  Boucher  and  Vanloo  had  taken 
the  place  of  Lesueur  and  Poussin.  The  ethics  of  pleasure  and 
interest  were  the  necessary  ethics  of  that  epoch.  It  must  not  be 
supposed  from  this  that  all  souls  were  corrupt.  Men,  says  M. 
Royer-Collard,  are  neither  as  good  nor  as  bad  as  their  principles.1 
No  stoic  has  been  as  austere  as  stoicism,  no  epicurean  as  enerva- 
ted as  epicureanism.  Human  weakness  practically  baffles  virtuous 
theories ;  in  return,  thank  God,  the  instinct  of  the  heart  condemns 
to  inconsistency  the  honest  man  who  errs  in  bad  theories.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  most  generous  and  most 
disinterested  sentiments  often  shone  forth  under  the  reign  of  the 
philosophy  of  sensation  and  the  ethics  of  interest.  But  it  is  none  • 
the  less  true,  that  the  philosophy  of  sensation  is  false,  and  the 
ethics  of  interest  destructive  of  all  morality. 

I  should  perhaps  make  an  apology  for  so  long  a  lecture ;  but 
it  was  necessary  to  combat  seriously  a  doctrine  of  morality  radi- 
cally incompatible  with  that  which  I  would  make  penetrate  your 
minds  and  your  souls.  It  was  especially  necessary  for  me  to  strip 
the  ethics  of  interest  of  that  false  appearance  of  liberty  which 
they  usurp  in  vain.  I  maintain,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  are 
the  ethics  of  slaves,  and  send  them  back  to  the  time  when  they 
ruled.  Now,  the  principle  of  interest  being  destroyed,  I  propose 
to  examine  other  principles  also,  less  false  without  doubt,  but  still 


1  (Evvre.s  de  Jteid,  vol.  iv.,  p.  297  :  "  Men  are  neither  as  good  nor  as  bad  as 
their  principles ;  and,  as  there  is  no  skeptic  in  the  street,  so  I  am  sure  there 
is  no  disinterested  spectator  of  human  actions  who  is  not  compelled  to  dis- 
cern them  as  just  and  unjust.  Skepticism  has  no  light  that  does  not  pale 
before  the  splendor  of  that  vivid  internal  light  that  lightens  the  objects 
of  moral  perception,  as  the  light  of  day  lightens  the  objects  of  sensible 
perception." 


254:  LECTURE   TWELFTH. 

defective,  exclusive,  and  incomplete,  upon  which  celebrated  sys- 
tems have  pretended  to  found  ethics.  I  will  successively  combat 
these  principles  taken  in  themselves,  and  will  then  bring  them 
together,  reduced  to  their  just  value,  in  a  theory  large  enough  to 
contain  all  the  true  elements  of  morality,  in  order  to  express  faith- 
fully common  sense  and  entire  human  consciousness. 


LECTURE    XIII. 

OTHER   DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES. 

The  ethics  of  sentiment. — The  ethics  founded  on  the  principle  of  the  interest 
of  the  greatest  number. — The  ethics  founded  on  the  will  of  God  alone. — 
The  ethics  founded  on  the  punishments  and  rewards  of  another  life. 

AGAINST  the  ethics  of  interest,  all  generous  souls  take  refuge 
in  the  ethics  of  sentiment.  The  following  are  some  of  the  facts 
on  which  these  ethics  are  supported,  and  by  which  they  seem  to 
be  authorized. 

When  we  have  done  a  good  action,  is  it  not  certain  that  we 
experience  a  pleasure  of  a  certain  nature,  which  is  to  us  the  re- 
ward of  this  action  ?  This  pleasure  does  not  come  from  the 
senses — it  has  neither  its  principle  nor  its  measure  in  an  impres- 
sion made  upon  our  organs.  Neither  is  it  confounded  with  the 
joy  of  satisfied  personal  interest, — we  are  not  moved  in  the  same 
manner,  in  thinking  that  we  have  succeeded,  and  in  thinking  that 
we  have  been  honest.  The  pleasure  attached  to  the  testimony 
of  a  good  conscience  is  pure ;  other  pleasures  are  much  alloyed. 
It  is  durable,  whilst  the  others  quickly  pass  away.  Finally,  it  is 
always  within  our  reach.  Even  in  the  midst  of  misfortune,  man 
bears  in  himself  a  permanent  source  of  exquisite  joys,  for  he 
always  has  the  power  of  doing  right,  whilst  success,  dependent 
upon  a  thousand  circumstances  of  which  we  are  not  the  masters, 
can  give  only  an  occasional  and  precarious  pleasure. 

As  virtue  has  its  joys,  so  crime  has  its  pains.  The  suffering 
that  follows  a  fault  is  the  just  recompense  for  the  pleasure  that 
we  have  found  in  it,  and  is  often  born  with  it.  It  poisons  culpa- 


256  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

ble  joys  and  the  successes  that  are  not  legitimate.  It  wounds, 
rends,  bites,  thus  to  speak,  and  thereby  receives  its  name.1  To 
be  man,  is  sufficient  to  understand  this  suffering, — it  is  remorse. 

Here  are  other  facts  equally  incontestable : 

I  perceive  a  man  whose  face  bears  the  marks  of  distress  and 
miseiy.  There  is  nothing  in  this  that  reaches  and  injures  me ; 
nevertheless,  without  reflection  or  calculation,  the  sight  alone  of 
this  suffering  man  makes  me  suffer.  This  sentiment  is  pity,  com- 
passion, whose  general  principle  is  sympathy. 

The  sadness  of  one  of  my  fellow-men  inspires  me  with  sadness, 
and  a  glad  face  disposes  me  to  joy : 

Ut  ridentibus  arrident,  ita  flentibns  adflent 
Human!  vultus. 

The  joy  of  others  has  an  echo  in  our  souls,  and  their  sufferings, 
even  their  physical  sufferings,  communicate  themselves  to  us 
almost  physically.  Not  as  exaggerated  as  it  has  been  supposed 
was  that  expression  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  to  her  sick  daughter :  I 
have  a  pain  in  your  breast. 

Our  soul  feels  the  need  of  putting  itself  in  unison,  and,  as  it 
were,  in  equilibrium  with  that  of  others.  Hence  those  electric 
movements,  thus  to  speak,  that  run  through  large  assemblies. 
One  receives  the  counter-stroke  of  the  sentiments  of  .his  neigh- 
bors,— admiration  and  enthusiasm  are  contagious,  as  well  as 
pleasantry  and  ridicule.  Hence  again  the  sentiment  with  which 
the  author  of  a  virtuous  action  inspires  us.  We  feel  a  pleasure 
analogous  to  that  which  he  feels  himself.  But  are  we  witnesses 
of  a  bad  action  ?  our  souls  refuse  to  participate  in  the  sentiments 
that  animate  the  culpable  man, — they  have  for  him  a  true  aver- 
sion, what  is  called  antipathy. 

We  do  not  forget  a  third  order  of  facts  that  pertain  to  the 
preceding,  but  differ  from  them. 

We  not  only  sympathize  with  the  author  of  a  virtuous  action, 

1  Mcrdre — to  bite,  is  the  main  root  ofremords — remorse. 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE    PRINCIPLES.  257 

we  wish  him  well,  we  voluntarily  do  good  to  him,  in  a  certain 
degree  we  love  him.  This  love  goes  as  far  as  enthusiasm  when 
it  has  for  its  object  a  sublime  act  and  a  hero.  This  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  homages,  of  the  honors  that  humanity  renders  to 
great  men.  And  this  sentiment  does  not  pertain  solely  to  others, 
— we  apply  it  to  ourselves  by  a  sort  of  return  that  is  not  egoism. 
Yes,  it  may  be  said  that  we  love  ourselves  when  we  have  done 
well.  The  sentiment  that  others  owe  us,  if  they  are  just,  we 
accord  to  ourselves, — that  sentiment  is  benevolence. 

On  the  contrary,  do  we  witness  a  bad  action  ?  We  expe- 
rience for  the  author  of  this  action  antipathy  ;  moreover  we 
wish  him  evil, — we  desire  that  he  should  suffer  for  the  fault  that 
he  has  committed,  and  in  proportion  to  the  gravity  of  the  fault. 
For  this  reason  great  culprits  are  odious  to  us,  if  they  do  not 
compensate  for  their  crimes  by  deep  remorse,  or  by  great  virtues 
mingled  with  their  crimes.  This  sentiment  is  not  malevolence. 
Malevolence  is  a  personal  and  interested  sentiment,  which  makes 
us  wish  evil  to  others,  because  they  are  an  obstacle  to  us.  Ha- 
tred does  not  ask  whether  such  a  man  is  virtuous  or  vicious,  but 
whether  he  obstructs  us,  surpasses  us,  or  injures  us.  The  senti- 
ment of  which  we  are  speaking  is  a  sort  of  hatred,  but  a  generous 
hatred  that  neither  springs  from  interest  nor  envy,  but  from  a 
shocked  conscience.  It  is  turned  against  us  when  we  do  evil,  as 
well  as  against  others. 

Moral  satisfaction  is  not  sympathy,  neither  is  sympathy,  to 
speak  rigorously,  benevolence.  But  these  three  phenomena 
have  the  common  character  of  all  being  sentiments.  They  give 
birth  to  three  different  and  analogous  systems  of  ethics. 

According  to  certain  philosophers,  a  good  action  is  that  which 
is  followed  by  moral  satisfaction,  a  bad  action  is  that  which  is 
followed  by  remorse.  The  good  or  bad  character  of  an  action  is 
at  first  attested  to  u?  by  the  sentiment  that  accompanies  it.  Then, 
this  sentiment,  with  its  moral  signification,  we  attribute  to  other 
men ;  for  we  judge  that  they  do  as  we  do,  that  in  presence  of  the 
same  actions  they  feel  the  same  sentiments. 


258  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

Other  philosophers  have  assigned  the  same  part  to  sympathy 
or  benevolence. 

For  these  the  sign  and  measure  of  the  good  is  in  the  senti- 
ments of  affection  and  benevolence  which  we  feel  for  a  moral 
agent.  Does  a  man  excite  in  us  by  such  or  such  an  action  a 
more  or  less  vivid  disposition  to  wish  him  well,  a  desire  to  see 
and  even  make  him  happy  ?  we  may  say  that  this  action  is  good. 
If,  by  a  series  of  actions  of  the  same  kind,  he  makes  this  dispo- 
sition and  this  desire  permanent  in  us,  we  judge  that  he  is  a  vir- 
tuous man.  Does  he  excite  an  opposite  desire,  an  opposite 
disposition  ?  he  appears  to  us  a  dishonest  man. 

For  the  former,  the  good  is  that  with  which  we  naturally 
sympathize.  Has  a  man  devoted  himself  to  death  through  love 
for  his  country  ?  this  heroic  action  awakens  in  us,  in  a  certain 
degree,  the  same  sentiments  that  inspired  him.  Bad  passions 
are  not  thus  echoed  in  our  hearts,  unless  they  find  us  already 
very  corrupt,  and  have  interest  for  their  accomplice ;  but  even 
then  there  is  something  in  us  that  revolts  against  these  passions, 
and  in  the  most  depraved  soul  subsists  a  concealed  sentiment  of 
sympathy  for  the  good,  and  antipathy  for  the  evil. 

These  different  systems  may  be  reduced  to  a  single  one,  which 
is  called  the  ethics  of  sentiment. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  show  the  difference  which  separates  these 
ethics  from  those  of  egoism.  Egoism  is  the  exclusive  love  of 
self,  is  the  thoughtful  and  permanent  search  for  our  own  pleas- 
ure and  our  own  well-being. 

What  is  there  more  opposed  to  interest  than  benevolence  ? 
In  benevolence,  far  from  wishing  others  well  by  reason  of  our 
interest,  we  will  voluntarily  risk  something,  we  will  make  some 
sacrifice  in  order  to  serve  an  honest  man  who  has  gained  our 
heart.  If  even  in  this  sacrifice  the  soul  feels  a  pleasure,  this 
pleasure  is  only  the  involuntary  accompaniment  of  sentiment,  it 
is  not  the  end  proposed, — we  feel  it  without  having  sought  it. 
It  is,  indeed,  permitted  the  soul  to  taste  this  pleasure,  for  it  is 
nature  herself  that  attaches  it  to  benevolence. 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  259 

Sympathy,  like  benevolence,  is  related  to  another  than  our- 
selves,— our  interest  is  not  its  starting-point.  The  soul  is  so 
constituted  that  it  is  capable  of  suffering  on  account  of  the  suf- 
ferings of  an  enemy.  That  a  man  does  a  noble  action,  although 
it  opposes  our  interests,  awakens  in  us  a  certain  sympathy  for 
that  action  and  its  author. 

The  attempt  has  been  made  to  explain  the  compassion  with 
which  the  suffering  of  one  of  our  fellow-men  inspires  us  by  the 
fear  that  we  have  of  feeling  it  in  our  turn.  But  the  unhappiness 
for  which  we  feel  compassion,  is  often  so  far  from  us  and  threatens 
us  so  little,  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  fear  it.  Doubtless,  that 
sympathy  may  have  existence  it  is  necessary  to  experience  suf- 
fering,— non  ignara  mail.  For  how  do  you  suppose  that  I  can 
be  sensible  to  evils  of  which  I  form  to  myself  no  idea  ?  But 
that  is  only  the  condition  of  sympathy.  It  is  not  at  all  necessary 
to  conclude  that  it  is  only  a  remembrance  of  our  own  ills  or  the 
fear  of  ills  to  come. 

No  recurrence  to  ourselves  can  account  for  sympathy.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  involuntary,  like  antipathy.  Then  it  cannot  be 
supposed  that  we  sympathize  with  any  one  in  order  to  win  his 
benevolence ;  for  he  who  is  its  object  often  knows  not  what  we 
feel.  What  benevolence  are  we  seeking,  when  we  sympathize 
with  men  that  we  have  never  seen,  that  we  never  shall  see,  with 
men  that  are  no  more  ? 

Egoism  admits  all  pleasures ;  it  repels  none ;  it  may,  if  it  is 
enlightened,  if  it  has  become  delicate  and  refined,  recommend, 
as  more  durable  and  less  alloyed,  the  pleasures  of  sentiment. 
The  ethics  of  sentiment  would  then  be  confounded  with  those  of 
egoism,  if  they  should  prescribe  obedience  to  sentiment  for  the 
pleasure  that  we  find  in  it.  There  would,  then,  be  no  disinter- 
estedness in  it, — the  individual  would  be  the  centre  and  sole 
end  of  all  his  actions.  But  such  is  not  the  case.  The  charm  of 
the  pleasures  of  conscience  comes  from  the  very  fact  that  we 
are  forgetful  of  self  in  the  action  that  has  produced  them.  So 
if  nature  has  joined  to  sympathy  and  benevolence  a  true  enjoy- 


260  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

ment,  it  is  on  condition  that  these  sentiments  remain  as  they  are, 
pure  and  disinterested  ;  you  must  only  think  of  the  object  of 
your  sympathy  and  benevolence  in  order  that  benevolence  and 
sympathy  may  receive  their  recompense  in  the  pleasure  which 
they  give.  Otherwise,  this  pleasure  no  longer  has  its  reason  for 
existence,  and  it  is  wanting  as  soon  as  it  sought  for  itself.  No 
metamorphose  of  interest  can  produce  a  pleasure  attached  to 
disinterestedness  alone. 

The  ethics  of  egoism  are  only  a  perpetual  falsehood, — they 
preserve  the  names  consecrated  by  ethics,  but  they  abolish  ethics 
themselves  ;  they  deceive  humanity  by  speaking  to  humanity  its 
own  language,  concealing  under  this  borrowed  language  a  radi- 
cal opposition  to  all  the  instincts,  to  all  the  ideas  that  form  the 
treasure  of  mankind.  On  the  contrary,  if  sentiment  is  not  the 
good  itself,  it  is  its  faithful  companion  and  useful  auxiliary.  It 
is  as  it  were  the  sign  of  the  presence  of  the  good,  and  renders 
the  accomplishment  of  it  more  easy.  We  always  have  sophisms 
at  our  disposal,  in  order  to  persuade  ourselves  that  our  true 
interest  is  to  satisfy  present  passion ;  but  sophism  has  less  influ- 
ence over  the  mind  when  the  mind  is  in  some  sort  defended  by 
the  heart.  Nothing  is,  therefore,  more  salutary  than  to  excite 
and  preserve  in  the  soul  those  noble  sentiments  that  lift  us  above 
the  slavery  of  personal  interest.  The  habit  of  participating  in 
the  sentiments  of  virtuous  men  disposes  us  to  act  like  them.  To 
cultivate  in  ourselves  benevolence  and  sympathy  is  to  fertilize  the 
source  of  charity  and  love,  is  to  nourish  and  develop  the  germ  of 
generosity  and  devotion. 

It  is  seen  that  we  render  sincere  homage  to  the  ethics  of  sen- 
timent. These  ethics  are  true, — only  they  are  not  sufficient  for 
themselves ;  they  need  a  principle  which  authorizes  them. 

I  act  well,  and  I  feel  on  account  of  it  an  internal  satisfaction  ; 
[  do  evil,  and  feel  remorse  on  account  of  it.  These  two  senti- 
ments do  not  qualify  the  act  that  I  have  just  done,  since  they 
follow  it.  Would  it  be  possible  for  us  to  feel  any  internal  satis- 
faction for  having  acted  well  if  we  did  not  judge  that  we  had 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  261 

acted  well  ? — any  remorse  for  having  done  evil,  if  we  did  not 
judge  that  we  had  done  evil  ?  At  the  same  time  that  we  do 
such  or  such  an  act,  a  natural  and  instinctive  judgment  charac- 
terizes it,  and  it  is  in  consequence  of  this  judgment  that  our 
sensibility  is  moved.  Sentiment  is  not  this  primitive  and  imme- 
diate judgment ;  far  from  forming  the  basis  of  the  idea  of  the 
good,  it  supposes  it.  It  is  manifestly  a  vicious  circle  to  derive 
the  knowledge  of  the  good  from  that  which  would  not  exist 
without  this  knowledge.1 

So  is  it  not  because  we  find  a  good  action  that  we  sympathize 
with  it  ?  Is  it  not  because  the  dispositions  of  a  man  appear  to 
us  conformed  to  the  idea  of  justice,  that  we  are  inclined  to  par- 
ticipate in  them  with  him  ?  Moreover,  if  sympathy  were  the 
true  criterion  of  the  good,  every  thing  for  which  we  feel  sympa- 
thy would  be  good.  But  sympathy  is  not  only  related  to  things 
in  their  nature  moral,  we  also  sympathize  with  the  grief  and  the 
joy  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  virtue  and  crime.  We  even 
sympathize  with  physical  sufferings.  Moral  sympathy  is  only  a 
case  of  general  sympathy.  It  must  even  be  acknowledged  that 
sympathy  is  not  always  in  accordance  with  right.  We  some- 
times sympathize  with  certain  sentiments  that  we  condemn,  be- 
cause, without  being  in  themselves  bad — which  would  prevent 
all  sympathy — they  give  an  inclination  to  the  greatest  faults  ; 
for  example,  love,  which  comes  so  near  to  irregularity,  and  emu- 
lation, that  so  quickly  leads  to  ambition. 

Benevolence  also  is  not  always  determined  by  the  good  alone. 
And,  again,  when  it  is  applied  to  a  virtuous  man,  it  supposes  a 
judgment  by  which  we  pronounce  that  this  man  is  virtuous.  It 
is  not  because  we  wish  the  author  of  an  action  well  that  we  judge 
that  this  action  is  good ;  it  is  because  we  judge  that  this  action 
is  good  that  we  wish  its  author  well.  This  is  not  all.  In  the 
sentiment  of  benevolence  is  enveloped  a  new  judgment  which  is 

1  See  1st  part,  lecture  5,  On  Mysticism,  and  2d  part,  lecture  6,  On  the  Sen- 
timent of  the  Beautiful.  See,  also,  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  detailed  refutation  of 
the  Theories  of  Hutcheson  and  Smith. 


LECTURE    THIRTEENTH. 

not  in  sympathy.  This  judgment  is  the  following  :  the  author 
of  a  good  action  deserves  to  be  happy,  as  the  author  of  a  bad 
action  deserves  to  suffer  in  order  to  expiate  it.  This  is  the  rea- 
son why  we  desire  happiness  for  the  one  and  reparatory  suffering 
for  the  other.  Benevolence  is  little  else  than  the  sensible  form 
of  this  judgment. 

All  these  sentiments,  therefore,  suppose  an  anterior  and  supe- 
rior judgment.  Everywhere  and  always  the  same  vicious  circle. 
From  the  fact  that  the  sentiments  which  we  have  just  described 
have  a  moral  character,  it  is  concluded  that  they  constitute  the 
idea  of  the  good,  whilst  it  is  the  idea  of  the  good  that  communi- 
cates to  them  the  character  that  we  perceive  in  them. 

Another  difficulty  is,  that  sentiments  pertain  to  sensibility, 
and  borrow  from  it  something  of  its  relative  and  changing  nature. 
It  is,  then,  very  necessary  that  all  men  should  be  made  to  enjoy 
with  the  same  delicacy  the  pleasures  of  the  heart.  There  are 
gross  natures  and  natures  refined.  If  your  desires  are  impetuous 
and  violent,  will  not  the  idea  of  the  pleasures  of  virtue  be  in  you 
much  more  easily  overcome  by  the  force  of  passion  than  if  na- 
ture had  given  you  a  tranquil  temperament  ?  The  state  of  the 
atmosphere,  health,  sickness,  calm  or  rouse  our  moral  sensibility. 
Solitude,  by  delivering  man  up  to  himself,  leaves  to  remorse  all 
its  energy,  the  presence  of  death  redoubles  it ;  but  the  world, 
noise,  force  of  example,  habit,  without  power  to  smother  it,  in 
some  sort  stun  it.  The  spirit  has  a  little  season  of  rest.  We 
are  not  always  in  the  vein  of  enthusiasm.  Courage  itself  has  its 
intermissions.  We  know  the  celebrated  expression :  He  was 
one  day  brave.  Humor  has  its  vicissitudes  that  influence  our 
most  intimate  sentiments.  The  purest,  the  most  ideal  sentiment 
still  pertains  on  some  side  to  organization.  The  inspiration  of 
the  poet,  the  passion  of  the  lover,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  mar- 
tyr, have  their  languors  and  shortcomings  that  often  depend 
on  very  pitiable  material  causes.  On  those  perpetual  fluctu- 
ations of  sentiment,  is  it  possible  to  ground  a  legislation  equal 
for  all? 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  263 

Sympathy  and  benevolence  do  not  escape  the  conditions  of  all 
the  phenomena  of  sensibility.  We  do  not  all  possess  in  the 
same  degree  the  power  of  feeling  what  others  experience.  Those 
who  have  suffered  most  best  comprehend  suffering,  and  conse- 
quently feel  for  it  the  most  lively  compassion.  With  mere 
imagination  one  also  represents  to  himself  better  and  feels  more 
what  passes  in  the  souls  of  his  fellow-man.  One  feels  more 
sympathy  for  physical  pleasures  and  pains,  another  for  pleasures 
and  pains  of  soul ;  and  each  of  these  sympathies  has  in  each  of 
us  its  degrees  and  variations.  They  not  only  differ,  they  often 
oppose  each  other.  Sympathy  for  talent  weakens  the  indigna- 
tion that  outraged  virtue  produces.  We  overlook  many  things 
in  Voltaire,  in  Rousseau,  in  Mirabeau,  and  we  excuse  them  on 
account  of  the  corruption  of  their  century.  The  sympathy 
caused  by  the  pain  of  a  condemned  person  renders  less  lively  the 
just  antipathy  excited  by  his  crime.  Thus  turns  and  wavers  at 
each  step  that  sympathy  which  some  would  set  up  as  the  su- 
preme arbiter  of  the  good.  Benevolence  does  not  vary  less. 
We  have  souls  naturally  more  or  less  affectionate,  more  or  less 
animated.  And,  then,  like  sympathy,  benevolence  receives  the 
counter- stroke  of  different  passions  that  are  mingled  with  it. 
Friendship,  for  example,  often  renders  us,  in  spite  of  ourselves, 
more  benevolent  than  justice  would  wish. 

Is  it  not  a  rule  of  prudence  not  to  listen  to,  without  always 
disdaining  them,  the  inspirations — often  capricious — of  the  heart  ? 
Governed  by  reason,  sentiment  becomes  to  it  an  admirable  sup- 
port. But,  delivered  up  to  itself,  in  a  little  while  it  degenerates 
into  passion,  and  passion  is  fantastic,  excessive,  unjust;  it  gives 
to  the  soul  spring  and  energy,  but  generally  troubles  and  perverts 
it.  It  is  even  not  very  far  from  egoism,  and  it  usually  terminates 
in  that,  wholly  generous  as  it  is  or  seems  to  be  in  the  beginning. 
Unless  we  always  keep  in  sight  the  good  and  the  inflexible  obli- 
gation that  is  attached  to  it,  unless  we  always  keep  in  sight  this 
fixed  and  immutable  point,  the  soul  knows  not  where  to  betake 
itself  on  that  moving  ground  that  is  called  sensibility ;  it  floats 


264  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

from  sentiment  to  passion,  from  generosity  to  selfishness,  ascend- 
ing one  day  to  the  pitch  of  enthusiasm,  and  the  next  day  descend- 
ing to  all  the  miseries  of  personality. 

Thus  the  ethics  of  sentiment,  although  superior  to  those  of 
interest,  are  not  less  insufficient :  1st.  They  give  as  the  founda- 
tion of  the  idea  of  the  good  what  is  founded  on  this  same  idea ; 
2d.  The  rule  that  they  propose  is  too  mobile  to  be  universally 
obligatory.1 

There  is  another  system  of  which  I  will  also  say,  as  of  the  pre- 
ceding, that  it  is  not  false,  but  incomplete  and  insufficient. 

The  partisans  of  the  ethics  of  utility  and  happiness  have  tried 
to  save  their  principle  by  generalizing  it.  According  to  them, 
the  good  can  be  nothing  but  happiness ;  but  egoism  is  wrong  in 
understanding  by  that  the  happiness  of  the  individual ;  we  must 
understand  by  it  the  general  happiness. 

Let  us  establish,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  new  principle  is  en- 
tirely opposed  to  that  of  personal  interest,  for,  according  to  cir- 

1  We  do  not  grow  weary  of  citing  M.  Koyer-Collard.  He  has  marked  the 
defects  of  the  ethics  of  sentiment  in  a  lively  and  powerful  passage,  from 
which  we  borrow  some  traits.  (Euvres  de  Iteid,  vol.  iii.,  p.  410,  411 :  "  The 
perception  of  the  moral  qualities  of  human  actions  is  accompanied  by  an 
emotion  of  the  soul  that  is  called  sentiment.  Sentiment  is  a  support  of  nature 
that  invites  us  to  good  by  the  attraction  of  the  noblest  joys  of  which  man  is 
capable,  and  turns  iis  from  evil  by  the  contempt,  the  aversion,  the  horror 
with  which  it  inspires  us.  It  is  a  fact  that  by  the  contemplation  of  a  beauti- 
ful action  or  a  noble  character,  at  the  same  time  that  we  perceive  these  qual- 
ities of  the  action  and  the  character  (perception,  which  is  a  judgment),  we 
feel  for  the  person  ajovfiuiningled  with  respect,  and  sometimes  an  admiration 
that  is  full  of  tenderness.  A  bad  action,  a  loose  and  perfidious  character, 
excite  a  contrary  perception  and  sentiment.  The  internal  approbation  of 
conscience  and  remorse  are  sentiments  attached  to  the  perception  of  the 
moral  qualities  of  our  own  actions.  ...  I  do  not  weaken  the  part  of 
sentiment ;  yet  it  is  not  true  that  ethics  are  wholly  in  sentiment ;  if  we  main- 
tain this,  we  annihilate  moral  distinctions.  .  .  .  Let  ethics  be  wholly  in 
sentiment,  and  nothing  is  in  itself  good,  nothing  is  in  itself  evil ;  good  and 
evil  are  relative  ;  the  qualities  of  human  actions  are  precisely  such  as  each 
one  feels  them  to  be.  Change  sentiment,  and  you  change  every  thing ;  the 
same  action  is  at  once  good,  indifferent,  and  bad,  according  to  the  affection 
of  the  spectator.  Silence  sentiment,  and  actions  are  only  physical  phenom- 
ena; obligation  is  resolved  into  inclinations,  virtue  into  pleasure,  honesty 
into  utility.  Such  are  the  ethics  of  Epicurus :  Dii  meliora  p-iis  /" 


OTHER  DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  265 

cumstances,  it  may  demand,  not  only  a  passing  sacrifice,  but  an 
irreparable  sacrifice,  that  of  life.  Now,  the  wisest  calculations  of 
personal  interest  cannot  go  thus  far. 

And,  notwithstanding,  this  principle  is  far  from  containing  true 
ethics  and  the  whole  of  ethics. 

The  principle  of  general  interest  leans  towards  disinterested- 
ness, and  this  is  certainly  much  ;  but  disinterestedness  is  the  con- 
dition of  virtue,  not  virtue  itself.  We  may  commit  an  injustice 
with  the  most  entire  disinterestedness.  From  the  fact  that  an 
action  does  not  profit  him  who  does  it,  it  does  not  follow  that  it 
may  not  be  in  itself  very  unjust,  in  seeking  general  interest 
before  all,  we  escape,  it  is  true,  that  vice  of  soul  which  is  called 
selfishness,  but  we  may  fall  into  a  thousand  iniquities.  Or,  in- 
deed, it  must  be  felt,  that  general  interest  is  always  conformed  to 
justice.  But  these  two  ideas  are  not  adequate  to  each  other. 
If  they  very  often  go  together,  they  are  sometimes  also  separated. 
Themistocles  proposed  to  the  Athenians  to  burn  the  fleet  of  the 
allies  that  was  in  the  port  of  Athens,  and  thus  to  secure  to  them- 
selves the  supremacy.  The  project  is  useful,  says  Aristides,  but 
it  is  unjust,  and  on  account  of  this  simple  speech,  the  Athenians 
renounce  an  advantage  that  must  be  purchased  by  an  injustice. 
Observe  that  Themistocles  had  no  particular  interest  in  that ;  he 
thought  only  of  the  interest  of  his  country.  But,  had  he  hazarded 
or  given  his  life  in  order  to  engage  the  Athenians  in  such  an  act, 
he  would  only  have  been  consecrating — what  has  often  been 
seen — an  admirable  devotion  to  a  course  in  itself  immoral. 

To  this  it  is  replied,  that  if,  in  the  example  cited,  justice  and 
interest  exclude  each  other,  it  is  because  the  interest  was  not 
sufficiently  general ;  and  the  celebrated  maxim  is  arrived  at,  that 
one  must  sacrifice  himself  to  his  family,  his  family  to  the  city,  the 
city  to  country,  country  to  humanity,  that,  in  fine,  the  good  is 
the  interest  of  the  greatest  number.1 


1  In  this  formula  is  recognized  the  system  of  Bentham,  who,  for  some  time, 
had  numerous  partisans  in  Engla  ,d,  and  even  in  France. 

12 


266  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

When  you  have  gone  thus  far,  you  have  not  yet  attained  even 
the  idea  of  justice.  The  interest  of  humanity,  like  that  of  the 
individual,  may  accord  in  fact  with  justice,  for  in  that  there  is 
certainly  no  incompatibility,  but  the  two  things  are  none  the 
more  identical,  so  that  we  cannot  say  with  exactness  that  the  in- 
terest of  humanity  is  the  foundation  of  justice.  A  single  case, 
even  a  single  hypothesis,  in  which  the  interest  of  humanity  should 
not  accord  with  the  good,  is  sufficient  to  enable  us  to  conclude 
that  one  is  not  essentially  the  other. 

We  go  farther :  if  it  is  the  interest  of  humanity  that  constitutes 
and  measures  justice,  that  only  is  unjust  which  this  interest  de- 
clares to  be  so.  But  you  are  not  able  to  affirm  absolutely,  that, 
in  any  circumstance,  the  interest  of  humanity  will  not  demand 
such  or  such  an  action ;  and  if  it  demands  it,  by  virtue  of  your 
principle,  it  will  be  necessary  to  do  it,  whatever  it  may  be,  and  to 
do  it  inasmuch  as  it  is  just. 

You  order  me  to  sacrifice  particular  interest  to  general  interest. 
But  in  the  name  of  what  do  you  order  me  to  do  this  ?  Is  it  in 
the  name  of  interest  ?  If  interest,  as  such,  must  touch  me,  evi- 
dently my  interest  must  also  touch  me,  and  I  do  not  see  why  I 
should  sacrifice  it  to  that  of  others. 

The  supreme  end  of  human  life,  you  say,  is  happiness.  I  hence 
conclude  very  reasonably,  that  the  supreme  end  of  my  life  is  my 
happiness. 

In  order  to  ask  of  me  the  sacrifice  of  my  happiness,  it  must  be 
called  for  by  some  other  principle  than  happiness  itself. 

Consider  to  what  perplexity  this  famous  principle  of  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number  condemns  me.  I  have  already  much 
difficulty  in  discerning  my  true  interest  in  the  obscurity  of  the 
future;  by  substituting  for  the  infallible  voice  of  justice  the  un- 
certain calculations  of  personal  interest,  you  have  not  rendered 
action  easy  for  me ;'  but  it  becomes  impossible,  if  it  is  necessary 
to  seek,  before  acting,  what  is  the  interest  not  only  of  myself,  but 

1  See  lecture  12. 


OTHER    DEFECTIVE    PRINCIPLES.  267 

of  my  family,  not  only  of  my  family,  but  of  my  country,  not  only 
of  my  country,  but  of  humanity.  What !  must  I  embrace  the 
entire  world  in  my  foresight  ?  What !  is  such  the  price  of  virtue  ? 
You  impose  upon  me  a  knowledge  that  God  alone  possesses. 
Am  I  in  his  counsels  so  as  to  adjust  my  actions  according  to  his 
decrees  ?  The  philosophy  of  history  and  the  wisest  diplomacy 
are  not,  then,  sufficient  for  conducting  ourselves  well.  Imagine, 
therefore,  that  there  is  no  mathematical  science  of  human  life. 
Chance  and  liberty  confound  the  profoundest  calculations,  over- 
turn the  best-established  fortunes,  relieve  the  most  desperate 
miseries,  mingle  good  fortune  and  bad,  confound  all  foresight. 

And  would  you  establish  ethics  on  a  foundation  so  mobile  ? 
flow  much  place  you  leave  for  sophism  in  that  complaisant  and 
enigmatical  law  of  general  interest  I1  It  will  not  be  very  difficult 

1 1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  p.  174 :  "  If  the  good  is  that  alone  which  must  be  the 
most  useful  to  the  greatest  number,  where  can  the  good  be  found,  and  who 
can  discern  it?  In  order  to  know  whether  such  an  action,  which  I  propose 
to  myself  to  do,  is  good  or  bad,  I  must  be  sure,  in  spite  of  its  visible  and 
direct  utility  in  the  present  moment,  that  it  will  not  become  injurious  in  a 
future  that  I  do  not  yet  know.  I  must  seek  whether,  useful  to  mine  and 
those  that  surround  me,  it  will  not  have  counter-strokes  disastrous  to  the 
human  race,  of  which  I  must  think  before  all.  It  is  important  that  I  should 
know  whether  the  money  that  I  am  tempted  to  give  this  unfortunate  who 
needs  it,  could  not  be  otherwise  more  usefully  employed.  In  fact,  the  rule 
is  here  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.  In  order  to  follow  it,  what 
calculations  are  imposed  on  me  ?  In  the  obscurity  of  the  future,  in  the  un- 
certainty of  the  somewhat  remote  consequences  of  every  action,  the  surest 
way  is  to  do  nothing  that  is  not  related  to  myself,  and  the  last  result  of  a 
prudence  so  refined  is  indifference  and  egoism.  Supposing  you  have  re- 
ceived a  deposit  from  an  opulent  neighbor,  who  is  old  and  sick,  a  sum  of 
which  he  has  no  need,  and  without  which  your  numerous  family  runs  the 
risk  of  dying  with  famine.  He  calls  on  you  for  this  sum, — what  will  you  do  ? 
The  greatest  number  is  on  your  side,  and  the  greatest  utility  also ;  for  this 
sum  is  insignificant  for  your  rich  neighbor,  whilst  it  will  save  your  family 
from  misery,  and  perhaps  from  death.  Father  of  a  family,  I  should  like 
much  to  know  in  the  name  of  what  principle  you  would  hesitate  to  retain 
the  sum  which  is  necessary  to  you  ?  Intrepid  reasoner,  placed  in  the  alter- 
native of  killing  this  sick  old  man,  or  of  letting  your  wife  and  children  die  of 
hunger,  in  all  honesty  of  conscience  you  ought  to  kill  him.  You  have  the 
right,  it  is  even  your  duty  to  sacrifice  the  less  advantage  of  a  single  person 
to  much  the  greater  advantage  of  a  greater  number ;  and  since  this  principle 
is  the  expression  of  true  justice,  you  are  only  jts  minister  in  doing  what  you 


268  LECTURE  THIRTEENTH. 

always  to  find  some  remote  reason  of  general  interest,  which  will 
excuse  us  from  being  faithful  in  the  present  moment  to  our 
friends,  when  they  shall  be  in  misfortune.  A  man  in  adversity 
addresses  himself  to  my  generosity.  But  could  I  not  employ  my 
money  in  a  way  more  useful  to  humanity  ?  Will  not  the  coun- 
try have  need  of  it  to-morrow  ?  Let  us  virtuously  keep  it  for  the 
country  then.  Moreover,  even  where  the  interest  of  all  seems 
evident,  there  still  remains  some  chance  of  error ;  it  is,  therefore, 
better  to  withhold.  It  will  always  be  wisdom  to  withhold.  Yes, 
when  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  do  well,  to  be  sure  of  serving  the 
greatest  interest  of  the  greatest  number,  none  but  the  rash  and 
senseless  will  dare  to  act.  The  principle  of  general  interest  will 
produce,  I  admit,  great  devotedness,  but  it  will  also  produce  great 
crimes.  Is  it  not  in  the  name  of  this  principle  that  fanatics  of 
every  kind,  fanatics  in  religion,  fanatics  in  liberty,  fanatics  in  phi- 
losophy, taking  it  upon  themselves  to  understand  the  eternal  inter- 
est of  humanity,  have  engaged  in  abominable  acts,  mingled  often 
with  a  sublime  disinterestedness  ? 

Another  error  of  this  system  is  that  it  confounds  the  good  itself 
with  one  of  its  applications.  If  the  good  is  the  greatest  interest 
of  the  greatest  number,  the  consequence  is  clear,  that  there  are 
only  public  and  social  ethics,  and  no  private  ethics ;  there  is  only 
a  single  class  of  duties,  duties  towards  others,  and  there  are  no 
duties  towards  ourselves.  But  this  is  retrenching  precisely  those 
of  our  duties  that  most  surely  guarantee  the  exercise  of  all  the 
rest.1  The  most  constant  relations  that  I  sustain  are  with  that 


do.  A  vanquishing  enemy  or  a  furious  people  threaten  destruction  to  a 
whole  city,  if  there  be  not  delivered  up  to  them  the  head  of  such  a  man, 
who  is,  nevertheless,  innocent.  In  the  name  of  the  greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number,  this  man  will  be  immolated  without  scruple.  It  might 
even  be  maintained  that  innocent  to  the  last,  he  has  ceased  to  be  so,  since 
he  is  an  obstacle  to  the  public  good.  It  having  once  been  declared  that  jus- 
tice is  the  interest  of  the  greatest  number,  the  only  question  is  to  know 
where  this  interest  is.  Now,  here,  doubt  is  impossible  ;  therefore,  it  is  per- 
fectly just  to  offer  innocence  as  a  holocaust  to  public  safety.  This  conse- 
quence must  be  accepted,  or  the  principle  rejected." 
1  See  lecture  15,  Private  and  Public  Ethics. 


OTHER  DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  269 

being  which  is  myself.  I  am  my  own  most  habitual  society.  I 
bear  in  myself,  as  Plato1  has  well  said,  a  whole  world  of  ideas, 
sentiments,  desires,  passions,  emotions,  which  claim  a  legislation. 
This  necessary  legislation  is  suppressed. 

Let  us  also  say  a  word  on  a  system  that,  under  sublime  appear- 
ances, conceals  a  vicious  principle. 

There  are  persojis  who  believe  that  they  are  magnifying  God, 
by  placing  in  his  will  alone  the  foundation  of  the  moral  law,  and 
the  sovereign  motive  of  humanity  in  the  punishments  and  re- 
wards that  it  has  pleased  him  to  attach  to  the  respect  and  violation 
of  his  will. 

Let  us  understand  what  we  are  about  in  a  matter  of  such  deli- 
cacy. 

It  is  certain,  and  we  shall  establish  it  for  the  good,2  as  we  have 
done  for  the  true  and  the  beautiful,3  it  is  certain  that,  from  expla- 
nations to  explanations,  we  come  to  be  convinced  that  God  is 
definitively  the  supreme  principle  of  ethics,  so  that  it  may  be  very 
truly  said,  that  the  good  is  the  expression  of  his  will,  since  his 
will  is  itself  the  expression  of  the  eternal  and  absolute  justice  that 
resides  in  him.  God  wills,  without  doubt,  that  we  should  act 
according  to  the  law  of  justice  that  he  has  put  in  our  understand- 
ing and  our  heart ;  but  it  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  conclude  that 
he  has  arbitrarily  instituted  this  law.  Far  from  that,  justice  is  in 
the  will  of  God  only  because  it  has  its  roots  in  his  intelligence 
and  wisdom,  that  is  to  say,  in  his  most  intimate  nature  and  es- 
sence. 

While  making,  then,  every  reservation  in  regard  to  what  is 
true  in  the  system  that  founds  ethics  on  the  will  of  God,  we  must 
show  what  there  is  in  this  system,  as  it  is  presented  to  us,  false, 
arbitrary,  and  incompatible  with  ethics  themselves.4 


1  Plato,  Republic,  vol.  ix.  and  x.  of  our  translation. 

2  Lecture  16.  8  Lectures  4  and  7. 

4  This  polemic  is  not  new.  The  school  of  St.  Thomas  engaged  in  it  early 
against  the  theory  of  Occam,  which  was  quite  similar  to  that  which  we  com- 
bat. See  our  Sketch  of  a  General  History  of  Philosophy,  2d  Series,  vol.  ii., 


270  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

In  the  first  place,  it  does  not  pertain  to  the  will,  whatever  it 
may  be,  to  institute  the  good,  any  more  than  it  belongs  to  it  to 
institute  the  true  and  the  beautiful.  I  have  no  idea  of  the  will 
of  God  except  by  my  own,  to  be  sure  with  the  differences  that 
separate  what  is  finite  from  what  is  infinite.  Now,  I  cannot  by 
my  will  found  the  least  truth.  Is  it  because  my  will  is  limited  ? 
No ;  were  it  armed  with  infinite  power,  it  would,  in  this  respect, 
be  equally  impotent.  Such  is  the  nature  of  my  will  that,  in 
doing  a  thing,  it  is  conscious  of  the  power  to  do  the  opposite : 
and  that  is  not  an  accidental  character  of  the  will,  it  is  its  funda- 
mental character  ;  if,  then,  it  is  supposed  that  truth,  or  that  first 
part  of  it  which  is  called  justice,  has  been  established  as  it  is  by 
an  act  of  volition,  human  or  Divine,  it  must  be  acknowledged 
that  another  act  might  have  established  it  otherwise,  and  made 
what  is  now  just  unjust,  and  what  is  unjust  just.  But  such  mo- 
bility is  contrary  to  the  nature  of  justice  and  truth.  In  fact, 
moral  truths  are  as  absolute  as  metaphysical  truths.  God  can- 
not make  effects  exist  without  a  cause,  phenomena  without  a 
substance ;  neither  can  he  make  it  evil  to  respect  his  word,  to 
love  truth,  to  repress  one's  passions.  The  principles  of  ethics  are 
immutable  axioms  like  those  of  geometry.  Of  moral  laws  espe- 
cially must  be  said  what  Montesquieu  said  of  all  laws  in  general, 
— they  are  necessary  relations  that  are  derived  from  the  nature  of 
things. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  good  and  the  just  are  derived  from 
the  divine  will ;  on  the  divine  will  obligation  will  also  rest.  But 
can  any  will  whatever  be  the  foundation  of  obligation  ?  The 


lect.  9,  On  Scholasticism,.  Here  are  two  decisive  passages  from  St.  Thomas, 
1st  book  of  the  Summation  against  the  Gentiles,  chap.  Ixxxvii:  "Per  prse- 
dicta  autem  excluditur  error  dicentium  omnia  procedcre  a  Deo  secundum 
simplicem  voluntatem,  ut  de  nullo  oporteat  rationem  reddere,  nisi  quia 
Deus  vult.  Quod  etiam  divinae  Scripturse  contrariatur,  quae  Deum  perhibet 
secundum  ordinem  sapiential  suse  omnia  fecisse,  secundum  illud  Psalm  ciii. : 
omnia  in  sapientia  fecisti."  Ibid.,  book  ii.,  chap.  xxiv. :  " Per  hoc  autem  ex- 
cluditur quorundam  error  qui  dicebant  omnia  ex  simplica  divina  voluntate 
dependere  aliqua  ratione." 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE   PRINCIPLES.  271 

divine  will  is  the  will  of  an  omnipotent  being,  and  I  am  a  feeble 
being.  This  relation  of  a  feeble  being  to  an  omnipotent  being, 
does  not  contain  in  itself  any  moral  idea.  One  may  be  forced  to 
obey  the  stronger,  but  he  is  not  obligated  to  do  it.  The  sove- 
reign orders  of  the  will  of  God,  if  his  will  could  for  a  moment  be 

O  * 

separated  from  his  other  attributes,  would  not  contain  the  least 
ray  of  justice ;  and,  consequently,  there  would  not  descend  into 
my  soul  the  least  shade  of  obligation. 

One  will  exclaim, — It  is  not  the  arbitrary  will  of  God  that 
makes  the  foundation  of  obligation  and  justice ;  it  is  his  just  will. 
Very  well.  Every  thing  changes  then.  It  is  not  the  pure  will 
of  God  that  obligates  us,  it  is  the  motive  itself  that  determines 
his  will,  that  is  to  say,  the  justice  passed  into  his  will.  The  dis- 
tinction between  the  just  and  the  unjust  is  not  then  the  work  of 
his  will. 

One  of  two  things.  Either  we  found  ethics  on  the  will  of 
God  alone,  and  then  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  just 
and  unjust,  is  gratuitous,  and  moral  obligation  does  not  exist ;  or 
you  give  authority  to  the  will  of  God  by  justice,  which,  in  your 
hypothesis,  must  have  received  from  the  will  of  God  its  authority, 
which  is  a  petitio  principii. 

Another  petitio  principii  still  more  evident.  In  the  first  place, 
you  are  compelled,  in  order  legitimately  to  draw  justice  from  the 
will  of  God,  to  suppose  that  this  will  is  just,  or  I  defy  any  one  to 
show  that  this  will  alone  can  ever  form  the  basis  of  justice. 
Moreover,  evidently  you  cannot  comprehend  what  a  just  will  of 
God  is,  if  you  do  not  already  possess  the  idea  of  justice.  This 
idea,  then,  does  not  come  from  that  of  the  will  of  God. 

On  the  one  hand,  you  may  have,  and  you  do  have,  the  idea  of 
justice,  without  understanding  the  will  of  God ;  on  the  other,  you 
cannot  conceive  the  justice  of  the  divine  will,  without  having 
conceived  justice  elsewhere. 

Are  not  these  reasons  sufficient,  I  pray  you,  to  conclude  that 
the  sole  will  of  God  is  not  for  us  the  principle  of  the  idea  of  the 
good? 


272  LECTURE   THIRTEENTH. 

And  now,  behold  the  natural  consummation  of  the  ethical 
system  that  we  are  examining  : — the  just  and  the  unjust  are  what 
it  has  pleased  God  to  declare  such,  by  attaching  to  them  the  re- 
wards and  punishments  of  another  life.  The  divine  will  mani- 
fests itself  here  only  by  an  arbitrary  order ;  it  adds  to  this  order 
promises  and  threats. 

But  to  what  human  faculty  are  addressed  the  promise  and 
threat  of  the  chastisements  and  the  rewards  of  another  life  ?  To 
the  same  one  that  in  this  life  fears  pain  and  seeks  pleasure,  shuns 
unhappiness  and  desires  happiness,  that  is  to  say,  to  sensibility 
animated  by  imagination,  that  is  to  say,  again,  to  what  is  most 
changing  in  each  of  us  and  most  different  in  the  human  species. 
The  joys  and  sufferings  of  another  life  excite  in  us  the  two  most 
vivid  but  most  mobile  passions,  hope  and  fear.  Every  thing  in- 
fluences our  fears  and  hopes, — aye,  health,  the  passing  cloud,  s 
ray  of  the  sun,  a  cup  of  coffee,  a  thousand  causes  of  this  kind.  I 
have  known  men,  even  philosophers,  who  on  certain  days  hoped 
more,  and  other  days  less.  And  such  a  basis  some  would  give 
to  ethics !  Then  it  is  doing  nothing  else  than  proposing  for 
human  conduct  an  interested  motive.  The  calculation  which  I 
obey  is  purer,  if  you  will ;  the  happiness  that  one  makes  me 
hope  for  is  greater ;  but  I  see  in  that  no  justice  that  obligates 
me,  no  virtue  and  no  vice  in  me,  who  know  or  do  not  know  how 
to  make  this  calculation,  not  having  a  head  as  strong  as  that  of 
Pascal,1  who  yield  to  or  resist  those  fears  and  hopes  according  to 
the  disposition  of  my  sensibility  and  my  imagination,  over  which 
I  have  no  power.  Finally,  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  the  future 
life  are  instituted  on  the  ground  of  punishments  and  rewards. 
Now,  none  but  actions  in  themselves  good  or  bad  can  be  re- 
warded and  punished.  If  already  there  is  in  itself  no  good,  no 
law  that  in  conscience  we  are  obligated  to  follow,  there  is  neither 
merit  nor  demerit;  recompense  is  not  then  recompense,  nor 


1  See  the  famous  calculus  applied  to  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  Des  Pen- 
ties  de  Pascal,  vol.  i.  of  the  4th  Series,  p.  229-235,  and  p.  289-296. 


OTHER   DEFECTIVE    PRINCIPLES.  273 

penalty  penalty,  since  they  ere  such  only  on  the  condition  of 
being  the  complement  and  the  sanction  of  the  idea  of  the  good. 
Where  this  idea  does  not  pre-exist,  there  remain,  instead  of  rec- 
ompense and  penalty,  only  the  attraction  of  pleasure  and  the  fear 
of'suffering,  added  to  a  prescription  deprived  in  itself  of  morality. 
In  that  we  come  back  to  the  punishments  of  earth  invented  for 
the  purpose  of  frightening  popular  imagination,  and  supported 
solely  on  the  decrees  of  legislators,  on  an  abstraction  of  good  and 
evil,  of  justice  and  injustice,  of  merit  and  demerit.  It  is  the 
worst  human  justice  that  is  found  thus  transported  into  heaven. 
We  shall  see  that  the  human  soul  has  foundation  somewhat 
solider.1 

These  different  systems,  false  or  incomplete,  having  been 
rejected,  we  arrive  at  the  doctrine  that  is  to  our  eyes  perfect 
truth,  because  it  admits  only  certain  facts,  neglects  none,  and 
maintains  for  all  of  them  their  character  and  rank. 

1  Lecture  16. 

12* 


LECTURE   XIV. 

TEUE     PRINCIPLES      OF     ETHICS. 

Description  of  the  different  facts  that  compose  the  moral  phenomena. — 
Analysis  of  each  of  these  facts : — 1st,  Judgment  and  idea  of  the  good. 
That  this  judgment  is  absolute.  Eelation  between  the  true  and  the  good. 
— 2d,  Obligation.  Eefutation  of  the  doctrine  of  Kant  that  draws  the  idea 
of  the  good  from  obligation  instead  of  founding  obligation  on  the  idea  of 
the  good. — 3d,  Liberty,  and  the  moral  notions  attached  to  the  notion  of 
liberty. — 4th,  Principle  of  merit  and  demerit.  Punishments  and  rewards. 
—  5th,  Moral  sentiments. — Harmony  of  all  these  facts  in  nature  and 
science. 

PHILOSOPHIC  criticism  is  not  confined  to  discerning  the  errors 
of  systems ;  it  especially  consists  in  recognizing  and  disengaging 
the  truths  mixed  with  these  errors.  The  truths  scattered  in 
different  systems  compose  the  whole  truth  which  each  of  these 
almost  always  expresses  on  a  single  side.  So,  the  systems  that 
we  have  just  run  over  and  refuted  deliver  up  to  us,  in  some 
sort,  divided  and  opposed  to  each  other,  all  the  essential  elements 
of  human  morality.  The  only  question  is  to  collect  them,  in 
order  to  restore  the  entire  moral  phenomenon.  The  history  of 
philosophy,  thus  understood,  prepares  the  way  for  or  confirms 
psychological  analysis,  as  psychological  analysis  receives  from 
the  history  of  philosophy  its  light.  Let  us,  then,  interrogate 
ourselves  in  presence  of  human  actions,  and  faithfully  collect, 
without  altering  them  by  any  preconceived  system,  the  ideas  and 
the  sentiments  of  every  kind  that  the  spectacle  of  these  actions 
produce  in  us. 

There  are  actions  that  are  agreeable  or  disagreeable  to  us, 
that  procure  us  advantages  or  injure  us,  in  a  word,  that  are,  in 
one  way  or  another,  directly  or  indirectly,  addressed  to  our  inter- 


TRUE   PRINCIPLES    OF    ETHICS.  275 

est.  We  are  rejoiced  with  actions  that  are  useful  to  us,  and 
shun  those  that  may  injure  us.  We  seek  earnestly  and  with  the 
greatest  effort  what  seems  to  us  our  interest. 

This  is  an  incontestable  fact.  Here  is  another  fact  that  is  not 
less  incontestable. 

There  are  actions  that  have  no  relation  to  us,  that,  conse- 
quently, we  cannot  estimate  and  judge  on  the  ground  of  our 
interest,  that  we  nevertheless  qualify  as  good  or  bad. 

Suppose  that  before  your  eyes  a  man,  strong  and  armed,  falls 
upon  another  man,  feeble  and  disarmed,  whom  he  maltreats  and 
kills,  in  order  to  take  away  his  purse.  Such  an  action  does  not 
reach  you  in  any  way,  and,  notwithstanding,  it  fills  you  with 
indignation.1  You  do  every  thing  in  your  power  that  this  mur- 
derer may  be  arrested  and  delivered  up  to  justice;  you  demand 
that  he  shall  be  punished,  and  if  he  is  punished  in  one  way  or 
another,  you  think  that  it  is  just ;  your  indignation  is  appeased 
only  after  a  chastisement  proportioned  to  the  crime  committed 
has  been  inflicted  on  the  culprit.  I  repeat  that  in  this  you 
neither  hope  nor  fear  any  thing  for  yourself.  Were  you  placed 
in  an  inaccessible  fortress,  from  the  top  of  which  you  might  wit- 
ness this  scene  of  murder,  you  would  feel  these  sentiments  none 
the  less. 

This  is  only  a  rude  picture  of  what  takes  place  in  you  at  the 
sight  of  a  crime.  Apply  now  a  little  reflection  and  analysis  to 
the  different  traits  of  which  this  picture  is  composed,  without 
destroying  their  nature,  and  you  will  have  a  complete  philosophic 
theory. 

What  is  it  that  first  strikes  you  in  what  you  have  experienced  ? 
It  is  doubtless  the  indignation,  the  instinctive  horror  that  you 
have  felt.  There  is,  then,  in  the  soul  a  power  of  raising  indig- 
nation that  is  foreign  to  all  personal  interests !  There  are,  then, 
in  us  sentiments  of  which  we  are  not  the  end  !  There  is  an  an- 
tipathy, an  aversion,  a  horror,  that  are  not  related  to  what 

1  On  indignation,  see  lecture  11. 


276  LECTUKE    FOURTEENTH. 

injures  us,  but  to  acts  whose  remotest  influence  cannot  reach 
us,  that  we  detest  for  the  sole  reason  that  we  judge  them  to 
be  bad! 

Yes,  we  judge  them  to  be  bad.  A  judgment  is  enveloped 
under  the  sentiments  that  we  have  just  mentioned.  In  fact,  in 
the  midst  of  the  indignation  that  transports  you,  let  one  tell  you 
that  all  this  generous  anger  pertains  to  your  particular  organiza- 
tion, and  that,  after  all,  the  action  that  takes  place  is  indifferent, 
— you  revolt  against  such  an  explanation,  you  exclaim  that  the 
action  is  bad  in  itself;  you  not  only  express  a  sentiment,  you 
pronounce  a  judgment.  The  next  day  after  the  action,  when 
the  feelings  that  agitated  your  soul  have  been  quieted,  you  none 
the  less  still  judge  that  the  action  was  bad ;  you  judge  thus  six- 
months  after,  you  judge  thus  always  and  everywhere ;  and  it  is 
because  you  judge  that  this  action  is  in  itself  bad,  that  you  bear 
this  other  judgment,  that  it  should  not  have  been  done. 

This  double  judgment  is  at  the  foundation  of  sentiment ;  other- 
wise sentiment  would  be  without  reason.  If  the  action  is  not 
bad  in  itself,  if  he  who  has  done  it  was  not  obligated  not  to  do 
it,  the  indignation  that  we  experience  is  only  a  physical  emotion, 
an  excitement  of  the  senses,  of  the  imagination,  of  the  heart, — a 
phenomenon  destitute  of  every  moral  character,  like  the  trouble 
that  visits  us  before  some  frightful  scene  of  nature.  You  cannot 
rationally  feel  indignation  for  the  author  of  an  indifferent  action. 
Every  sentiment  of  disinterested  anger  against  the  author  of  an 
action  supposes  in  him  who  feels  it,  this  double  conviction : — 
1st,  That  the  action  is  in  itself  bad;  2d,  That  it  should  not  have 
been  done. 

This  sentiment  also  supposes  that  the  author  of  this  action  has 
himself  a  consciousness  of  the  evil  that  he  has  done,  and  of  the 
obligation  that  he  has  violated ;  for  without  this  he  would  have 
acted  like  a  brutal  and  blind  force,  not  like  an  intelligent  and 
moral  force,  and  we  should  have  felt  towards  him  no  more  indig- 
nation than  towards  a  rock  that  falls  on  our  head,  towards  a  tor- 
rent that  sweeps  us  away  into  an  abyss. 


TRUE    PRINCIPLES   OF    ETHICS.  277 

Indignation  equally  supposes  in  him  who  is  the  object  of  it  an- 
other character  still,  to  wit,  that  he  is  free, — that  he  could  do  or 
not  do  what  he  has  done.  It  is  evident  that  the  agent  must  be 
free  in  order  to  be  responsible. 

You  desire  that  the  murderer  may  be  arrested  and  delivered  up 
to  justice,  you  desire  that  he  may  be  punished ;  when  he  has 
been  arrested,  delivered  up  to  justice,  and  punished,  you  are  sat- 
isfied. What  does  that  mean  ?  Is  it  a  capricious  movement  of 
the  imagination  and  heart  ?  No.  Calm  or  indignant,  at  the 
moment  of  the  crime  or  a  long  time  after,  without  any  spirit  of 
personal  vengeance,  since  you  are  not  the  least  interested  in  this 
affair,  you  none  the  less  declare  that  the  murderer  ought  to  be 
punished.  If,  instead  of  receiving  a  punishment,  the  culpable 
man  makes  his  crime  a  stepping-stone  to  fortune,  you  still  declare 
that,  far  from  deserving  prosperity,  he  deserves  to  suffer  in  repa- 
ration of  his  fault ;  you  protest  against  lot,  and  appeal  to  a  su- 
perior justice.  This  judgment  philosophers  have  called  the  judg- 
ment of  merit  and  demerit.  I  suppose,  in  the  mind  of  man,  the 
idea  of  a  supreme  law  that  attaches  happiness  to  virtue,  unhap- 
piness  to  crime.  Omit  the  idea  of  this  law,  and  the  judgment  of 
merit  and  demerit  is  without  foundation.  Omit  this  judgment, 
and  indignation  against  prosperous  crime  and  the  neglect  of  vir- 
tue is  an  unintelligible,  even  an  impossible  sentiment,  and  never, 
at  the  sight  of  crime,  would  you  think  of  demanding  the  chas- 
tisement of  a  criminal. 

All  the  parts  of  the  moral  phenomenon  are  connected  together ; 
all  are  equally  certain  parts, — destroy  one,  and  you  completely 
overturn  the  whole  phenomenon.  The  most  common  observation 
bears  witness  to  all  these  facts,  and  the  least  subtle  logic  easily 
discovers  their  connection.  It  is  necessary  to  renounce  even  sen- 
timent, or  it  must  be  avowed  that  sentiment  covers  a  judgment, 
the  judgment  of  the  essential  distinction  between  good  and  evil, 
that  this  distinction  involves  an  obligation,  that  this  obligation 
is  applied  to  an  intelligent  and  free  agent;  in  fine,  it  must  be  ob- 
served that  the  distinction  between  merit  and  demerit,  that  cor- 


278  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

responds  to  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  contains  the 
principle  of  the  natural  harmony  between  virtue  and  happiness. 

What  have  we  done  thus  far  ?  We  have  done  as  the  physicist 
or  chemist  does,  who  submits  a  composite  body  to  analysis  and 
reduces  it  to  its  simple  elements.  The  only  difference  here  is  that 
the  phenomenon  to  which  our  analysis  is  applied  is  in  us,  instead 
of  being  out  of  us.  Besides,  the  processes  employed  are  exactly 
the  same ;  there  is  in  them  neither  system  nor  hypothesis ;  there 
are  only  experience  and  the  most  immediate  induction. 

In  order  to  render  experience  more  certain,  we  may  vary  it. 
Instead  of  examining  what  takes  place  in  us  when  we  are  spec- 
tators of  bad  or  good  actions  in  another,  let  us  interrogate  our 
own  consciousness  when  we  are  doing  well  or  ill.  In  this  case, 
the  different  elements  of  the  moral  phenomenon  are  still  more 
striking,  and  their  order  appears  more  distinctly. 

Suppose  that  a  dying  friend  has  confided  to  me  a  more  or  less 
important  deposit,  charging  me  to  remit  it  after  his  death  to  a 
person  whom  he  has  designated  to  me  alone,  and  who  himself 
knows  not  what  has  been  done  in  his  favor.  He  who  confided  to 
me  the  deposit  dies,  and  carries  with  him  his  secret ;  he  for  whom 
the  deposit  has  been  made  to  me  has  no  knowledge  of  it ;  if,  then, 
I  wish  to  appropriate  this  deposit  to  myself,  no  one  will  ever  be 
able  to  suspect  me.  In  this  case  what  should  I  do  ?  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  circumstances  more  favorable  for  crime.  If  I  con- 
sult only  interest,  I  ought  not  to  hesitate  to  return  the  deposit. 
If  I  hesitate,  in  the  system  of  interest,  I  am  senseless,  and  I  revolt 
against  the  law  of  my  nature.  Doubt  alone,  in  the  impunity  that  is 
assured  me,  would  betray  in  me  a  principle  different  from  interest. 

But  naturally  I  do  not  doubt,  I  believe  with  the  most  entire 
certainty,  that  the  deposit  confided  to  me  does  not  belong  to  me, 
that  it  has  been  confided  to  me  to  be  remitted  to  another,  and 
that  to  this  other  it  belongs.  Take  away  interest,  and  I  should 
not  even  think  of  returning  this  deposit, — it  is  interest  alone  that 
tempts  me.  It  tempts  me,  it  does  not  bear  me  away  without 
resistance.  Hence  the  struggle  between  interest  and  duty, — a 


TRUE   PRINCIPLES    OF   ETHICS.  279 

struggle  filled  with  troubles,  opposite  resolutions,  by  turns  taken 
and  abandoned  ;  it  energetically  attests  the  presence  of  a  principle 
of  action  different  from  interest  and  quite  as  powerful. 

Duty  succumbs,  interest  triumphs  over  it.  I  retain  the  deposit 
that  has  been  confided  to  me,  and  apply  it  to  my  own  wants,  and 
to  the  wants  of  my  family ;  it  makes  me  rich,  and  in  appearance 
happy ;  but  I  internally  suffer  with  that  bitter  and  secret  suffer- 
ing that  is  called  remorse.1  The  fact  is  certain ;  it  has  been  a 
thousand  times  described ;  all  languages  contain  the  word,  and 
there  is  no  one  who,  in  some  degree,  has  not  experienced  the 
thing,  that  sharp  gnawing  at  the  heart  which  is  caused  by  every 
fault,  great  or  small,  as  long  as  it  has  not  been  expiated.  This 
painful  recollection  follows  me  in  the  midst  of  pleasures  and  pros- 
perity. The  applauses  of  the  crowd  are  not  able  to  silence  this 
inexorable  witness.  Only  a  long  habit  of  sin  and  crime,  an  accu- 
mulation of  oft-repeated  faults,  can  compass  this  sentiment,  at 
once  avenging  and  expiatory.  When  it  is  stifled,  every  resource 
is  lost,  and  an  end  is  made  of  the  soul's  life ;  as  long  as  it  endures, 
the  sacred  fire  is  not  wholly  extinguished. 

Remorse  is  a  suffering  of  a  particular  character.  In  remorse  I 
do  not  suffer  on  account  of  such  an  impression  made  upon  my 
senses,  nor  on  account  of  the  thwarting  of  my  natural  pas- 
sions, nor  on  account  of  the  injury  done  or  threatened  to  my  in- 
terest, nor  by  the  disquietude  of  my  hopes  and  the  agony  of  my 
fears :  no,  I  suffer  without  any  external  cause,  yet  I  suffer  in  the 
most  cruel  manner.  I  suffer  for  the  sole  reason  that  I  have  a 
consciousness  of  having  committed  a  bad  action  which  I  knew  I 
was  obligated  not  to  commit,  which  I  was  able  not  to  commit, 
which  leaves  behind  it  a  chastisement  that  I  know  to  be  deserved. 
No  exact  analysis  can  take  away  from  remorse,  without  destroy- 
ing it,  a  single  one  of  these  elements.  Remorse  contains  the  idea 
of  good  and  evil,  of  an  obligatory  law,  of  liberty,  of  merit  and 
demerit.  All  these  ideas  were  already  in  the  struggle  between 

On  remorse,  see  lecture  11. 


280  LECTUKE   FOURTEENTH. 

good  and  evil ;  they  reappear  in  remorse.  In  vain  interest  coun- 
selled me  to  appropriate  the  deposit  that  had  been  confided  to 
me ;  something  said  to  me,  and  still  says  to  me,  that  to  appro- 
priate it  is  to  do  evil,  is  to  commit  an  injustice ;  I  judged,  and 
judge,  thus,  not  such  a  day,  but  always,  not  under  such  a  circum- 
stance, but  under  all  circumstances.  In  vain  I  say  to  myself  that 
the  person  to  whom  I  ought  to  remit  this  deposit  has  no  need  of 
it,  and  that  it  is  necessary  to  me ;  I  judge  that  a  deposit  must  be 
respected  without  regard  to  persons,  and  the  obligation  that  is 
imposed  on  me  appears  inviolable  and  absolute.  Having  taken 
upon  myself  this  obligation,  I  believe  by  this  fact  alone  that  I 
have  the  power  to  fulfil  it :  this  is  not  all ;  I  am  directly  con- 
scious of  this  power,  I  know  with  the  most  certain  knowledge 
that  I  am  able  to  keep  this  deposit  or  to  remit  it  to  the  lawful 
owner ;  and  it  is  precisely  because  I  am  conscious  of  this  power 
that  I  judge  that  I  have  deserved  punishment  for  not  having 
made  the  use  of  it  for  which  it  was  given  me.  It  is,  in  fine,  be- 
cause I  have  a  lively  consciousness  of  all  that,  that  I  experience 
this  sentiment  of  indignation  against  myself,  this  suffering  of  re- 
morse which  expresses  in  itself  the  moral  phenomenon  entire. 

According  to  the  rules  of  the  experimental  method,  let  us  take 
an  opposite  course ;  let  us  suppose  that,  in  spite  of  the  suggestions 
of  interest,  in  spite  of  the  pressing  goad  of  misery,  in  order  to  be 
faithful  to  pledged  faith,  I  send  the  deposit  to  the  person  that  had 
been  designated  to  me ;  instead  of  the  painful  scene  that  just  now 
passed  in  consciousness,  there  passes  another  quite  as  real,  but 
very  different.  I  know  that  I  have  done  well ;  I  know  that  I 
have  not  obeyed  a  chimera,  an  artificial  and  mendacious  law,  but 
a  law  true,  universal,  obligatory  upon  all  intelligent  and  free  be- 
ings. I  know  that  I  have  made  a  good  use  of  my  liberty ;  I 
have  of  this  liberty,  by  the  very  use  that  I  have  made  of  it,  a 
sentiment  more  distinct,  more  energetic,  and,  in  some  sort,  tri- 
umphant. Every  opinion  would  accuse  me  in  vain,  I  appeal 
from  it  to  a  better  justice,  and  this  justice  is  already  declared  in 
me  by  sentiments  that  press  upon  each  other  in  my  soul.  I 


TRUE   PRINCIPLES   OF  ETHICS.  281 

respect  myself,  esteem  myself,  and  believe  that  I  have  a  right  to 
the  esteem  of  others ;  I  have  the  sentiment  of  my  dignity ;  I  feel 
for  myself  only  sentiments  of  affection  opposed  to  that  species  of 
horror  for  myself  with  which  I  was  just  now  inspired.'  Instead 
of  remorse,  I  feel  an  incomparable  joy  that  no  one  can  deprive 
me  of,  that,  were  every  thing  else  wanting  to  me,  would  console 
and  support  me.  This  sentiment  of  pleasure  is  as  penetrating, 
as  profound  as  was  the  remorse.  It  expresses  the  satisfaction  of 
all  the  generous  principles  of  human  nature,  as  remorse  repre- 
sented their  revolt.  It  testifies  by  the  internal  happiness  that  it 
gives  me  to  the  sublime  accord  between  happiness  and  virtue, 
whilst  remorse  is  the  first  link  in  that  fatal  chain,  that  chain  of 
iron  and  adamant,  which,  according  to  Plato,1  binds  pain  to 
transgression,  trouble  to  passion,  misery  to  faithlessness,  vice,  and 
crime. 

Moral  sentiment  is  the  echo  of  all  the  moral  judgments  and 
entire  moral  life.  It  is  so  striking  that  it  has  been  regarded  by 
a  somewhat  superficial  philosophy  as  sufficient  to  found  entire 
ethics ;  and,  nevertheless,  we  have  just  seen  that  this  admirable 
sentiment  would  not  exist  without  the  different  judgments  that 
we  have  just  enumerated  ;  it  is  their  consequence,  but  not  their 
principle ;  it  supplies,  but  does  not  constitute  them ;  it  does  not 
take  their  place,  but  sums  them  up. 

Now  that  we  are  in  possession  of  all  the  elements  of  human 
morality,  we  proceed  to  take  these  elements  one  by  one,  and  sub- 
mit them  to  a  detailed  analysis. 

That  which  is  most  apparent  in  the  complex  phenomenon  that 
we  are  studying  is  sentiment;  but  its  foundation  is  judgment. 

The  judgment  of  good  and  evil  is  the  principle  of  all  that  fol- 
lows it ;  but  this  judgment  rests  only  on  the  constitution  itself  of 
human  nature,  like  the  judgment  of  the  true  and  the  judgment 
of  the  beautiful.  As  well  as  these  two  judgments,2  that  of  the 
good  is  a  simple,  primitive,  indecomposable  judgment. 

1  See  the  Gorgias,  with  the  Argument,  vol.  iii.  of  our  translation. 

2  Lectures  1  and  6. 


LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

Like  them,  again,  it  is  not  arbitrary.  We  cannot  but  fear  this 
judgment  in  presence  of  certain  acts ;  and,  in  fearing  it,  we  know 
that  it  does  not  make  good  or  evil,  but  declares  it.  The  reality 
of  moral  distinctions  is  revealed  by  this  judgment,  but  it  is  inde- 
pendent of  it,  as  beauty  is  independent  of  the  eye  that  perceives 
it,  as  universal  and  necessary  truths  are  independent  of  the  reason 
that  discovers  them.1 

Good  and  evil  are  real  characters  of  human  actions,  although 
these  characters  might  not  be  seen  with  our  eyes  nor  touched 
with  our  hands.  The  moral  qualities  of  an  action  are  none  the 
less  real  for  not  being  confounded  with  the  material  qualities  of 
this  action.  This  is  the  reason  why  actions  materially  identical 
may  be  morally  very  different.  A  homicide  is  always  a  homi- 
cide ;  nevertheless,  it  is  often  a  crime,  it  is  also  often  a  legitimate 
action,  for  example,  when  it  is  not  done  for  the  sake  of  vengeance, 
nor  for  the  sake  of  interest,  in  a  strict  case  of  self-defence. 

It  is  not  the  spilling  of  blood  that  makes  the  crime,  it  is  the 
spilling  of  innocent  blood.  Innocence  and  crime,  good  and  evil, 
do  not  reside  in  such  or  such  an  external  circumstance  determined 
one  for  all.  Reason  recognizes  them  with  certainty  under  the 
most  different  appearances,  in  circumstances  sometimes  the  same 
and  sometimes  dissimilar. 

Good  and  evil  almost  always  appear  to  us  connected  with  par- 
ticular actions ;  but  it  is  not  on  account  of  what  is  particular  in 
them  that  these  actions  are  good  or  bad.  So  when  I  declare  that 
the  death  of  Socrates  is  unjust,  and  that  the  devotion  of  Leonidas 
is  admirable,  it  is  the  unjust  death  of  a  wise  man  that  I  condemn, 
and  the  devotion  of  a  hero  that  I  admire.  It  is  not  important 
whether  this  hero  be  called  Leonidas  or  d'Assas,  whether  the  im- 
molated sage  be  called  Socrates  or  Bailly. 

The  judgment  of  the  good  is  at  first  applied  to  particular  ac- 
tions, and  it  gives  birth  to  general  principles  which  in  course 
serve  us  as  rules  for  judging  all  actions  of  the  same  kind.  As 

1  Lectures  2,  3,  and  6. 


TEUE   PRINCIPLES    OF   ETHICS.  283 

after  having  judged  that  such  a  particular  phenomenon  has  such 
a  particular  cause,  we  elevate  ourselves  to  the  general  principle 
that  every  phenomenon  has  its  cause  ;'  so  we  erect  into  a  general 
rule  the  moral  judgment  that  we  have  borne  in  regard  to  a  par- 
ticular fact.  Thus,  at  first  we  admire  the  death  of  Leonidas, 
thence  we  elevate  ourselves  to  the  principle  that  it  is  good  to  die 
for  one's  country.  We  already  possess  the  principle  in  its  first 
application  to  Leonidas;  otherwise,  this  particular  application 
would  not  have  been  legitimate,  it  would  not  have  been  even 
possible ;  but  we  possess  it  implicitly ;  as  soon  as  it  is  disengaged, 
it  appears  to  us  under  its  universal  and  pure  form,  and  we  apply 
it  to  all  analogous  cases. 

Ethics  have  their  axioms  like  other  sciences ;  and  these  axioms 
are  rightly  called  in  all  languages  moral  truths. 

It  is  good  not  to  violate  one's  oath,  and  in  this  is  also  involved 
a  truth.  In  fact,  an  oath  is  founded  in  the  truth  of  things, — its 
good  is  only  derived.  Moral  truths  considered  in  themselves 
have  no  less  certainty  than  mathematical  truths.  The  idea  of  a 
deposit  being  given,  I  ask  whether  the  idea  of  faithfully  keeping 
it  is  not  necessarily  attached  to  it,  as  to  the  idea  of  a  triangle  is 
attached  the  idea  that  its  three  angles  are  equal  to  two  right 
angles.  You  may  withhold  a  deposit ;  but,  in  withholding  it,  do 
not  believe  that  you  change  the  nature  of  things,  nor  that  you 
make  it  possible  for  a  deposit  ever  to  become  property.  These 
two  ideas  exclude  each  other.  You  have  only  a  false  semblance 
of  property ;  and  all  the  efforts  of  passion,  all  the  sophisms  of 
interest  will  not  reverse  the  essential  differences.  This  is  the 
reason  why  moral  truth  is  so  troublesome, — it  is  because,  like  all 
truth,  it  is  what  it  is,  and  does  not  bend  to  any  caprice.  Always 
the  same  and  always  present,  in  spite  of  all  our  efforts,  it  inexor- 
ably condemns,  with  a  voice  always  heard,  but  not  always  list- 
ened to,  the  sensible  and  the  culpable  will  which  thinks  to  hinder 
it  from  being  by  denying  it,  or  rather  by  pretending  to  deny  it. 

1 1st  part,  lecture  2. 


284:  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

Moral  truths  are  distinguished  from  other  truths  by  the  singu- 
lar character  that,  as  soon  as  we  perceive  them,  they  appear  to  us 
as  the  rule  of  our  conduct.  If  it  is  true  that  a  deposit  is  made 
to  be  remitted  to  its  legitimate  possessor,  it  is  necessary  to  remit 
it  to  him.  To  the  necessity  of  believing  is  here  added  the  neces- 
sity of  practising. 

The  necessity  of  practising  is  obligation.  Moral  truths,  in  the 
eyes  of  reason  necessary,  are  to  the  will  obligatory. 

Moral  obligation,  like  the  moral  truth  that  is  its  foundation,  is 
absolute.  As  necessary  truths  are  not  more  or  less  necessary,1  so 
obligation  is  not  more  or  less  obligatory.  There  are  degrees  of 
importance  between  different  obligations ;  but  there  are  no  de- 
grees in  the  same  obligation.  We  are  not  somewhat  obligated, 
almost  obligated ;  we  are  either  wholly  obligated,  or  not  at  all. 

If  obligation  is  absolute,  it  is  immutable  and  universal.  For, 
if  the  obligation  of  to-day  were  not  the  obligation  of  to-morrow, 
if  what  is  obligatory  for  me  were  not  so  for  you,  obligation  would 
differ  from  itself,  would  be  relative  and  contingent. 

This  fact  of  absolute,  immutable,  universal  obligation  is  so  cer- 
'tain  and  so  manifest,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  doctrine  of 
interest  to  obscure  it,  that  one  of  the  profoundest  moralists  of 
modern  philosophy,  particularly  struck  with  this  fact,  has  re- 
garded it  as  the  principle  of  the  whole  of  ethics.  By  separating 
duty  from  interest  which  ruins  it,  and  from  sentiment  which 
enervates  it,  Kant  restored  to  ethics  their  true  character.  He  ele- 
vated himself  very  high  in  the  century  of  Helvetius,  in  elevating 
himself  to  the  holy  law  of  duty ;  but  he  still  did  not  ascend  high 
enough,  he  did  not  reach  the  reason  itself  of  duty. 

The  good  for  Kant  is  what  is  obligatory.  But  logically, 
whence  comes  the  obligation  of  performing  an  action,  if  not  from 
the  intrinsic  goodness  of  this  act  ?  Is  it  not  because  that,  in  the 
order  of  reason,  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  regard  a  deposit  as 
a  property,  that  we  cannot  appropriate  it  to  ourselves  without  a 

1  Lecture  2. 


TBUE  PKINCIPLES   OF  ETHICS.  285 

crime  ?  If  one  action  must  be  performed,  and  another  action 
must  not,  it  is  because  there  is  apparently  an  essential  difference 
between  these  two  acts.  To  found  the  good  on  obligation,  in- 
stead of  founding  obligation  on  the  good,  is,  therefore,  to  take  the 
effect  for  the  cause,  is  to  draw  the  principle  from  the  consequence. 

If  I  ask  an  honest  man  who,  in  spite  of  the  suggestions  of 
misery,  has  respected  the  deposit  that  was  intrusted  to  him,  why 
he  respected  it,  he  will  answer  me, — because  it  was  my  duty.  If 
I  persist,  and  ask  why  it  was  his  duty,  he  will  very  rightly 
answer, — because  it  was  just,  because  it  was  good.  That  point 
having  been  reached,  all  answers  are  stopped ;  but  questions  also 
are  stopped.  No  one  allows  a  duty  to  be  imposed  upon  him 
without  rendering  to  himself  a  reason  for  it ;  but  as  soon  as  it  is 
recognized  that  this  duty  is  imposed  upon  us  because  it  is  just, 
the  mind  is  satisfied ;  for  it  reaches  a  principle  beyond  which  it 
has  nothing  more  to  seek,  justice  being  its  own  principle.  First 
truths  carry  with  them  their  reason  for  being.  Now,  justice,  the 
essential  distinction  between  good  and  evil  in  the  relations  of  men 
among  themselves,  is  the  primary  truth  of  ethics. 

Justice  is  not  a  consequence,  since  we  cannot  ascend  to  another 
more  elevated  principle  ;  and  duty  is  not,  rigorously  speaking,  a 
principle,  since  it  supposes  a  principle  above  it,  that  explains  and 
authorizes  it,  to  wit,  justice. 

Moral  truth  no  more  becomes  relative  and  subjective,  to  take 
for  a  moment  the  language  of  Kant,  in  appearing  to  us  obliga- 
tory, than  truth  becomes  relative  and  subjective  in  appearing  to 
us  necessary ;  for  in  the  very  nature  of  truth  and  the  good  must 
be  sought  the  reason  of  necessity  and  obligation.  But  if  we  stop 
at  obligation  and  necessity,  as  Kant  did,  in  ethics  as  well  as  in 
metaphysics,  without  knowing  it,  and  even  against  our  intention, 
we  destroy,  or  at  least  weaken  truth  and  the  good.1 

Obligation  has  its  foundation  in  the  necessary  distinction  be- 
tween good  and  evil ;  and  is  itself  the  foundation  of  liberty.  If 

1  1st  part,  lecture  3.    See  also  vol.  v.  of  the  1st  Series,  lecture  8. 


286  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

man  has  duties,  he  must  possess  the  faculty  of  fulfilling  them,  of 
resisting  desire,  passion,  and  interest,  in  order  to  obey  law.  He 
ought  to  be  free,  therefore  he  is  free,  or  human  nature  is  in  con- 
tradiction with  itself.  The  direct  certainty  of  obligation  implies 
the  corresponding  certainty  of  liberty. 

This  proof  of  liberty  is  doubtless  good ;  but  Kant  is  deceived 
in  supposing  it  the  only  legitimate  proof.  It  is  very  strange  that 
he  should  have  preferred  the  authority  of  reasoning  to  that  of 
consciousness,  as  if  the  former  had  no  need  of  being  confirmed 
by  the  latter ;  as  if,  after  all,  my  liberty  ought  not  to  be  a  fact 
for  me.1  Empiricism  must  be  greatly  feared  to  distrust  the  testi- 
mony of  consciousness ;  and,  after  such  a  distrust,  one  must  be 
very  credulous  to  have  a  boundless  faith  in  reasoning.  We  do 
not  believe  in  our  liberty  as  we  believe  in  the  movement  of  the 
earth.  The  profoundest  persuasion  that  we  have  of  it  comes 
from  the  continual  experience  that  we  carry  with  ourselves. 

Is  it  true  that  in  presence  of  an  act  to  be  done  I  am  able 
to  will  or  not  to  will  to  do  it?  In  that  lies  the  whole  question  of 
liberty. 

Let  us  clearly  distinguish  between  the  power  of  doing  and  the 
power  of  willing.  The  will  has,  without  doubt,  in  its  service  and 
under  its  empire,  the  most  of  our  faculties ;  but  that  empire,  which 
is  real,  is  very  limited.  I  will  to  move  my  arm,  and  I  am  often 
able  to  do  it, — in  that  resides,  as  it  were,  the  physical  power  of 
will ;  but  I  am  not  always  able  to  move  my  arm,  if  the  muscles 
are  paralyzed,  if  the  obstacle  to  be  overcome  is  too  strong,  &p<^ 
the  execution  does  not  always  depend  on  me ;  but  what  always 
depends  on  me  is  the  resolution  itself.  The  external  effects  may 
be  hindered,  my  resolution  itself  can  never  be  hindered.  In  its 
own  domain,  will  is  sovereign. 

And  I  am  conscious  of  this  sovereign  power  of  the  will.  I  feel 
in  myself,  before  its  determination,  the  force  that  cap  determine 
itself  in  such  a  manner  or  in  such  another.  At  the  same  time 

1st  Series,  vol.  v.,  lecture  7. 


TRUE   PRINCIPLES    OF    ETHICS.  287 

that  I  will  this  or  that,  I  am  equally  conscious  of  the  power  to 
will  the  opposite ;  I  am  conscious  of  being  master  of  my  resolu- 
tion, of  the  ability  to  arrest  it,  continue  it,  repress  it.  When  the 
voluntary  act  ceases,  the  consciousness  of  the  power  does  not 
cease, — it  remains  with  the  power  itself,  which  is  superior  to  all 
its  manifestations.  Liberty  is  therefore  the  essential  and  always- 
subsisting  attribute  of  will.1 

The  will,  we  have  seen,2  is  neither  desire  nor  passion, — it  is 
exactly  the  opposite.  Liberty  of  will  is  not,  then,  the  license  of 
desires  and  passions.  Man  is  a  slave  in  desire  and  passion,  he  is 
free  only  in  will.  That  they  may  not  elsewhere  be  confounded, 
liberty  and  anarchy  must  not  be  confounded  in  psychology.  Pas- 
sions abandoning  themselves  to  their  caprices,  is  anarchy.  Pas- 
sions concentrated  upon  a  dominant  passion,  is  tyranny.  Liberty 
consists  in  the  struggle  of  will  against  this  tyranny  and  this  anar- 
chy. But  this  combat  must  have  an  aim,  and  this  aim  is  the 
duty  of  obeying  reason,  which  is  our  true  sovereign,  and  justice, 
which  reason  reveals  to  us  and  prescribes  for  us.  The  duty  of 
obeying  reason  is  the  law  of  will,  and  will  is  never  more  itself 
than  when  it  submits  to  its  law.  We  do  not  possess  ourselves, 
as  long  as  to  the  domination  of  desire,  of  passion,  of  interest,  reason 
does  not  oppose  the  counterpoise  of  justice.  Reason  and  justice 
free  us  from  the  yoke  of  passions,  without  imposing  upon  us 
another  yoke.  For,  once  more,  to  obey  them,  is  not  to  abdicate 
liberty,  but  to  save  it,  to  apply  it  to  its  legitimate  use. 

It  is  in  liberty,  and  in  the  agreement  of  liberty  with  reason 
and  justice,  that  man  belongs  to  himself,  to  speak  properly.  He 
is  a  person  only  because  he  is  a  free  being  enlightened  by  reason. 

What  distinguishes  a  person  from  a  simple  thing,  is  especially 
the  difference  between  liberty  and  its  opposite.  A  thing  is 


1  See,  for  the  entire  development  of  the  theory  of  liberty,  1st  Series,  vol. 
iii.,  lecture  1,  Locke,  p.  Yl ;  lecture  3,  Condittac,  p.  116,  149,  etc. ;  vol.  iv., 
lecture  23,  Beid,  p.  541-574;  2d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  Examination  of  the  System 
of  Locke,  lecture  25. 

*  Lecture  12. 


LECTURE    FOURTEENTH. 

that  which  is  not  free,  consequently  that  which  does  not  belong 
to  itself,  that  which  has  no  self,  which  has  only  a  numerical 
individuality,  a  perfect  effigy  of  true  individuality,  which  is  that 
of  person. 

A  thing,  not  belonging  to  itself,  belongs  to  the  first  person  that 
takes  possession  of  it  and  puts  his  mark  on  it. 

A  thing  is  not  responsible  for  the  movements  which  it  has  not 
willed,  of  which  it  is  even  ignorant.  Person  alone  is  responsible, 
for  it  is  intelligent  and  free ;  and  it  is  responsible  for  the  use  of  its 
intelligence  and  freedom. 

A  thing  has  no  dignity ;  dignity  is  only  attached  to  person. 

A  thing  has  no  value  by  itself;  it  has  only  that  which  per- 
son confers  on  it.  It  is  purely  an  instrument  whose  whole  value 
consists  in  the  use  that  the  person  using  it  derives  from  it.1 

Obligation  implies  liberty ;  where  liberty  is  not,  duty  is  want- 
ing, and  with  duty  right  is  wanting  also. 

It  is  because  there  is  in  me  a  being  worthy  of  respect,  that  I 
have  the  duty  of  respecting  it,  and  the  right  to  make  it  respected 
by  you.  My  duty  is  the  exact  measure  of  my  right.  The  one 
is  in  direct  ratio  with  the  other.  If  I  had  no  sacred  duty  to  re- 
spect what  makes  my  person,  that  is  to  say,  my  intelligence  and 
my  liberty,  I  should  not  have  the  right  to  defend  it  against  your 
injuries.  But  as  my  person  is  inviolable  and  sacred  in  itself, 
it  follows  that,  considered  in  relation  to  me,  it  imposes  on  me 
a  duty,  and,  considered  in  relation  to  you,  it  confers  on  me  a 
right. 

I  am  not  myself  permitted  to  degrade  the  person  that  I  am  by 
abandoning  myself  to  passion,  to  vice  and  crime,  and  I  am  not 
permitted  to  let  it  be  degraded  by  you. 

The  person  is  inviolable ;  and  it  alone  is  inviolable. 

It  is  inviolable  not  only  in  the  intimate  sanctuary  of  conscious- 
ness, but  in  all  its  legitimate  manifestations,  in  its  acts,  in  the 


1  See  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  Lecture  on  Smith  and  on  the  true  principle  of 
political  economy,  p.  278-802. 


TKUE   PRINCIPLES    OF   ETHICS.  289 

product  of  its  acts,  even  in  the  instruments  that  it  makes  its  own 
by  using  them. 

Therein  is  the  foundation  of  the  sanctity  of  property.  The  first 
property  is  the  person.  All  other  properties  are  derived  from 
that.  Think  of  it  well.  It  is  not  property  in  itself  that  has 
rights,  it  is  the  proprietor,  it  is  the  person  that  stamps  upon  it, 
with  its  own  character,  its  right  and  its  title. 

The  person  cannot  cease  to  belong  to  itself  without  degrading 
itself, — it  is  to  itself  inalienable.  The  person  has  no  right  over 
itself;  it  cannot  treat  itself  as  a  thing,  cannot  sell  itself,  cannot 
destroy  itself,  cannot  in  any  way  abolish  its  free  will  and  its  lib- 
erty, which  are  its  constituent  elements. 

Why  has  the  child  already  some  rights  ?  Because  it  will  be  a 
free  being.  Why  have  the  old  man,  returned  to  infancy,  and  the 
insane  man  still  some  rights  ?  Because  they  have  been  free 
beings.  We  even  respect  liberty  in  its  first  glimmerings  or  its 
last  vestiges.  Why,  on  the  other  hand,  have  the  insane  man  and 
the  imbecile  old  man  no  longer  all  their  rights  ?  Because  they 
have  lost  liberty.  Why  do  we  enchain  the  furious  madman  ? 
Because  he  has  lost  knowledge  and  liberty.  Why  is  slavery  an 
abominable  institution?  Because  it  is  an  outrage  upon  what 
constitutes  humanity.  This  is  the  reason  why,  in  fine,  certain 
extreme  devotions  are  sometimes  sublime  faults,  and  no  one  is 
permitted  to  offer  them,  much  less  to  demand  them.  There  is  no 
legitimate  devotion  against  the  very  essence  of  right,  against  lib 
erty,  against  justice,  against  the  dignity  of  the  human  person. 

We  have  not  been  able  to  speak  of  liberty,  without  indicating 
a  certain  number  of  moral  notions  of  the  highest  importance 
which  it  contains  and  explains ;  but  we  could  not  pursue  this  de- 
velopment without  encroaching  upon  the  domain  of  private  and 
public  ethics  and  anticipating  the  following  lecture. 

We  arrive,  then,  at  the  last  element  of  the  moral  phenomenon, 
the  judgment  of  merit  and  demerit. 

At  the  same  time  that  we  judge  that  a  man  has  done  a  good 
or  bad  action,  we  bear  this  other  judgment  quite  as  necessary  a& 

13 


290  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

the  former,  to  wit,  that  if  this  man  has  acted  well  he  has  merited 
a  reward,  and  if  he  has  acted  ill,  he  has  merited  a  punishment. 
It  is  exactly  the  same  with  this  judgment  as  with  that  of  the 
good.  It  may  be  outwardly  expressed  in  a  more  or  less  lively 
manner,  according  as  it  is  mingled  with  more  or  less  energetic 
feelings.  Sometimes  it  will  be  only  a  benevolent  disposition 
towards  the  virtuous  agent,  and  an  unfavorable  disposition  towards 
the  culpable  agent ;  sometimes  it  will  be  enthusiasm  or  indigna- 
tion. In  some  cases  one  will  make  himself  the  executor  of  the 
judgment  that  he  bears,  he  will  crown  the  hero  and  load  the 
criminal  with  chains.  But  when  all  your  feelings  are  calmed, 
when  enthusiasm  has  cooled  as  well  as  indignation,  when  time 
and  separation  have  rendered  an  action  almost  indifferent  to  you, 
you  none  the  less  persist  in  judging  that  the  author  of  this  action 
merits  a  reward  or  a  punishment,  according  to  the  quality  of  the 
action.  You  decide  that  you  were  right  in  the  sentiments  that 
you  felt,  and,  although  they  are  extinguished,  you  declare  them 
legitimate. 

The  judgment  of  merit  and  demerit  is  essentially  tied  to  the 
judgment  of  good  and  evil.  In  fact,  he  who  does  an  action  with- 
out knowing  whether  it  is  good  or  bad,  has  neither  merit  nor 
demerit  in  doing  it.  It  is  with  him  the  same  as  with  those 
physical  agents  that  accomplish  the  most  beneficent  or  the  most 
destructive  works,  to  which  we  never  think  of  attributing  knowl- 
edge and  will,  consequently  accountability.  Why  are  there  no 
penalties  attached  to  involuntary  crimes  ?  Because  for  that  very 
reason  they  are  not  regarded  as  crimes.  Hence  it  comes  that  the 
question  of  premeditation  is  so  grave  in  all  criminal  processes. 
Why  is  the  child,  up  to  a  certain  age,  subject  to  none  but  light 
punishments  ?  Because  where  the  idea  of  the  good  and  liberty 
are  wanting,  merit  and  demerit  are  also  wanting,  which  alone 
authorize  reward  and  punishment.  The  author  of  an  injurious 
but  involuntary  action  is  condemned  to  an  indemnity  correspond- 
ing to  the  damage  done ;  he  is  not  condemned  to  a  punishment 
properly  so  called. 


TRUE    PRINCIPLES    OF   ETHICS.  291 

Such  are  the  conditions  of  merit  and  demerit.  When  these 
conditions  are  fulfilled,  merit  and  demerit  manifest  themselves, 
and  involve  reward  and  punishment. 

Merit  is  the  natural  right  we  have  to  be  rewarded ;  demerit 
the  natural  right  that  others  have  to  punish  us,  and,  if  we  may 
thus  speak,  the  right  that  we  have  to  be  punished.  This  expres- 
sion may  seem  paradoxical,  nevertheless  it  is  true.  A  culpable 
man,  who,  opening  his  eyes  to  the  light  of  the  good,  should  com- 
prehend the  necessity  of  expiation,  not  only  by  internal  repent- 
ance, without  which  all  the  rest  is  in  vain,  but  also  by  a  real  and 
effective  suffering,  such  a  culpable  man  would  have  the  right  to 
claim  the  punishment  that  alone  can  reconcile  him  with  order. 
And  such  reclamations  are  not  so  rare.  Do  we  not  every  day  see 
criminals  denouncing  themselves  and  offering  themselves  up  to 
avenge  the  public  ?  Others  prefer  to  satisfy  justice,  and  do  not 
have  recourse  to  the  pardon  that  law  places  in  the  hands  of  the 
monarch  in  order  to  represent  in  the  state  charity  and  mercy,  as 
tribunals  represent  in  it  justice.  This  is  a  manifest  proof  of  the 
natural  and  profound  roots  of  the  idea  of  punishment  and  reward. 

Merit  and  demerit  imperatively  claim,  like  a  lawful  debt,  pun- 
ishment and  reward ;  but  reward  must  not  be  confounded  with 
merit,  nor  punishment  with  demerit ;  this  would  be  confounding 
cause  and  effect,  principle  and  consequence.  Even  were  reward 
and  punishment  not  to  take  place,  merit  and  demerit  would  sub- 
sist. Punishment  and  reward  satisfy  merit  and  demerit,  but  do 
not  constitute  them.  Suppress  all  reward  and  all  punishment, 
and  you  do  not  thereby  suppress  merit  and  demerit ;  on  the  con- 
trary, suppress  merit  and  demerit,  and  there  are  no  longer  true 
punishments  and  true  rewards.  Unmerited  goods  and  honors  are 
only  material  advantages ;  reward  is  essentially  moral,  and  its 
value  is  independent  of  its  form.  One  of  those  crowns  of  oak 
that  the  early  Romans  decreed  to  heroism  is  worth  more  than  all 
the  riches  in  the  world,  when  it  is  the  sign  of  the  recognition  and 
the  admiration  of  a  people.  To  reward  is  to  give  in  return.  He 
who  is  rewarded  must  have  first  given  something  in  order  to  de- 


292  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

serve  to  be  rewarded.  Reward  accorded  to  merit  is  a  debt ;  re- 
ward without  merit  is  a  charity  or  a  theft.  It  is  the  same  with 
punishment.  It  is  the  relation  of  pain  to  a  fault, — in  this  rela- 
tion, and  not  in  the  pain  alone,  is  the  truth  as  well  as  the  shame 
of  chastisement. 

'Tis  crime  and  not  the  scaffold  makes  the  shame.1 

There  are  two  things  that  must  be  unceasingly  repeated,  be- 
cause they  are  equally  true, — the  first  is,  that  the  good  is  good 
in  itself,  and  ought  to  be  pursued  whatever  may  be  the  conse- 
quences ;  the  second  is,  that  the  consequences  of  the  good  cannot 
fail  to  be  fortunate.  Happiness,  separated  from  the  good,  is  only 
a  fact  to  which  is  attached  no  moral  idea ;  but,  as  an  effect  of  the 
good,  it  enters  into  the  moral  order  and  completes  it. 

Virtue  without  happiness,  and  crime  without  unhappiness,  are 
a  contradiction,  a  disorder.  If  virtue  supposes  sacrifice,  that  is  to 
say,  suffering,  it  is  of  eternal  justice  that  the  sacrifice,  generously 
accepted  and  courageously  borne,  have  for  a  reward  the  very 
happiness  that  has  been  sacrificed.  So,  it  is  of  eternal  justice 
that  crime  be  punished  by  the  unhappiness  of  the  culpable  hap- 
piness which  it  has  tried  to  obtain  by  stealth. 

Now,  when  and  how  is  the  law  fulfilled  that  attaches  pleasure 
and  pain  to  good  and  evil  ?  Most  of  the  time  even  here  below. 
For  order  rules  in  this  world,  since  the  world  endures.  If  order 
is  sometimes  disturbed,  and  happiness  and  unhappiness  are  not 
always  distributed  in  right  proportion  to  crime  and  virtue,  still 
the  absolute  judgment  of  the  good,  the  absolute  judgment  of  ob- 
ligation, the  absolute  judgment  of  merit  and  demerit,  subsist 
inviolable  and  imprescriptible, — we  remain  convinced  that  he  who 
has  put  in  us  the  sentiment  and  the  idea  of  order  cannot  in  that 
fail  himself,  and  that  sooner  or  later  he  will  re-establish  the  sacred 
harmony  between  virtue  and  happiness  by  the  means  that  to  him 
belong.  But  the  time  has  not  come  to  sound  these  mysterious 

1  Le  crime  fait  la  honte  et  non  pas  1'echafaud. 


FKUE   PRINCIPLES   OF   ETHICS.  293 

prospects.1  It  is  sufficient  for  us,  but  it  was  necessary  to  mark 
them,  in  order  to  show  the  nature  and  the  end  of  moral  truth. 

We  terminate  this  analysis  of  the  different  parts  of  the  com- 
plex phenomenon  of  morality  by  recalling  that  one  which  is  the 
most  apparent  of  all,  which,  however,  is  only  the  accompaniment, 
and,  thus  to  speak,  the  echo  of  all  the  others — sentiment.  Senti- 
ment has  for  its  object  to  render  sensible  to  the  soul  the  tie  be- 
tween virtue  and  happiness.  It  is  the  direct  and  vital  application 
of  the  law  of  merit  and  demerit.  It  precedes  and  authorizes  the 
punishments  and  rewards  that  society  institutes.  It  is  the  inter- 
nal model  according  to  which  the  imagination,  guided  by  faith, 
represents  to  itself  the  punishments  and  rewards  of  the  divine  city. 
The  world  that  we  place  beyond  this  is,  in  great  part,  our  own 
heart  transported  into  heaven.  Since  it  comes  thence,  it  is  just 
that  it  should  return  thither. 

We  will  not  dwell  upon  the  different  phenomena  of  sentiment ; 
we  have  sufficiently  explained  them  in  the  last  lecture.  A  few 
words  will  replace  them  under  your  eyes. 

We  cannot  witness  a  good  action,  whoever  may  be  its  author, 
another  or  ourselves,  without  experiencing  a  particular  pleasure, 
analogous  to  that  which  is  attached  to  the  perception  of  the 
beautiful ;  and  we  cannot  witness  a  bad  action  without  feeling  a 
contrary  sentiment,  also  analogous  to  that  which  the  sight  of  an 
ugly  and  deformed  object  excites  in  us.  This  sentiment  is  pro- 
foundly different  from  agreeable  or  disagreeable  sensation. 

Are  we  the  authors  of  the  good  action  ?  We  feel  a  satisfac- 
tion that  we  do  not  confound  with  any  other.  It  is  not  the 
triumph  of  interest  nor  that  of  pride, — it  is  the  pleasure  of  modest 
honesty  or  dignified  virtue  that  renders  justice  to  itself.  Are  we 
the  authors  of  the  bad  action  ?  We  feel  offended  conscience 
groaning  within  us.  Sometimes  it  is  only  an  importunate  rec- 
lamation, sometimes  it  is  a  bitter  agony.  Remorse  is  a  suffering 
the  more  poignant  on  account  of  our  feeling  that  it  is  deserved. 

1  See  lecture  16,  God,  the  Principle  of  the  Idea  of  the  Good. 


294  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

The  spectacle  of  a  good  action  done  by  another  also  has  some- 
thing delicious  to  the  soul.  Sympathy  is  an  echo  in  us  that  re- 
sponds to  whatever  is  noble  and  good  in  others.  When  interest 
does  not  lead  us  astray,  we  naturally  put  ourselves  in  the  place  of 
him  who  has  done  well.  We  feel  in  a  certain  measure  the  senti- 
ments that  animate  him.  We  elevate  ourselves  to  the  mood  of 
his  spirit.  Is  it  not  already  for  the  good  man  an  exquisite  re- 
ward to  make  the  noble  sentiments  that  animate  him  thus  pass 
into  the  hearts  of  his  fellow-men  ?  The  spectacle  of  a  bad  action, 
instead  of  sympathy,  excites  an  involuntary  antipathy,  a  painful 
and  sad  sentiment.  Without  doubt,  this  sentiment  is  never  acute 
like  remorse.  There  is  in  innocence  something  serene  and  placid 
that  tempers  even  the  sentiment  of  injustice,  even  when  this  in- 
justice falls  on  us.  We  then  experience  a  sort  of  shame  for 
humanity,  we  mourn  over  human  weakness,  and,  by  a  melan- 
choly return  upon  ourselves,  we  are  less  moved  to  anger  than  to 
pity.  Sometimes  also  pity  is  overcome  by  a  generous  anger,  by 
a  disinterested  indignation.  If,  as  we  have  said,  it  is  a  sweet  re- 
ward to  excite  a  noble  sympathy,  an  enthusiasm  almost  always 
fertile  in  good  actions,  it  is  a  cruel  punishment  to  stir  up  around 
us  pity,  indignation,  aversion,  and  contempt. 

Sympathy  for  a  good  action  is  accompanied  by  benevolence 
for  its  author.  He  inspires  us  with  an  affectionate  disposition. 
Even  without  knowing  it,  we  would  love  to  do  good  to  him ;  we 
desire  that  he  may  be  happy,  because  we  judge  that  he  deserves 
to  be.  Antipathy  also  passes  from  the  action  to  the  person,  and 
engenders  against  him  a  sort  of  bad  will,  for  which  we  do  not 
blame  ourselves,  because  we  feel  it  to  be  disinterested  and  find  it 
legitimate. 

Moral  satisfaction  and  remorse,  sympathy,  benevolence,  and 
their  opposites  are  sentiments  and  not  judgments ;  but  they  are 
sentiments  that  accompany  judgments,  the  judgment  of  the  good, 
especially  that  of  merit  and  demerit.  These  sentiments  have 
been  given  us  by  the  sovereign  Author  of  our  moral  constitution 
to  aid  us  in  doing  good.  In  their  diversity  and  mobility,  they 


TRUE    PRINCIPLES    OF    ETHICS.  295 

cannot  be  the  foundations  of  absolute  obligation  which  must  be 
equal  for  all,  but  they  are  to  it  happy  auxiliaries,  sure  and  benefi- 
cent witnesses  of  the  harmony  between  virtue  and  happiness. 

These  are  the  facts  as  presented  by  a  faithful  description,  as 
brought  to  light  by  a  detailed  analysis. 

Without  facts  all  is  chimera;  without  a  severe  distinction  of 
facts,  all  is  confusion ;  but,  also,  without  the  knowledge  of  their 
relations,  instead  of  a  single  vast  doctrine,  like  the  total  phenome- 
non that  we  have  undertaken  to  embrace,  there  can  be  only  dif- 
ferent systems  like  the  different  parts  of  this  phenomenon,  conse- 
quently imperfect  systems,  systems  always  at  war  with  each 
other. 

We  set  out  from  common  sense  ;  for  the  object  of  true  science 
is  not  to  contradict  common  sense,  but  to  explain  it,  and  for  this 
end  we  must  commence  by  recognizing  it.  We  have  at  first 
painted  in  its  simplicity,  even  in  the  gross,  the  phenomenon  of 
morality.  Then  Ave  have  separated  its  elements,  and  carefully 
marked  the  characteristic  traits  of  each  of  them.  It  only  remains 
for  us  to  re-collect  them  all,  to  seize  their  relations,  and  thus  to 
find  again,  but  more  precise  and  more  clear,  the  primitive  unity 
that  served  us  as  a  point  of  departure. 

Beneath  all  facts  analysis  has  shown  us  a  primitive  fact,  which 
rests  only  on  itself, — the  judgment  of  the  good.  We  do  not 
sacrifice  other  facts  to  that,  but  we  must  establish  that  it  is  the 
first  both  in  date  and  in  importance. 

By  its  close  resemblance  to  the  judgment  of  the  true  and  the 
beautiful,  the  judgment  of  the  good  has  shown  us  the  affinities  of 
ethics,  metaphysics,  and  aesthetics. 

The  good,  so  essentially  united  to  the  true,  is  distinguished 
from  it  in  that  it  is  practical  truth.  The  good  is  obligatory. 
These  two  ideas  are  inseparable,  but  not  identical.  For  obliga- 
tion rests  on  the  good, — in  this  intimate  alliance,  from  the  good 
obligation  borrows  its  universal  and  absolute  character. 

The  obligatory  good  is  the  moral  law.  Therein  is  for  us  the 
foundation  of  all  ethics.  Thereby  it  is  that  we  separate  ourselves 


296  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

from  the  ethics  of  interest  and  the  ethics  of  sentiment.  We  ad- 
mit all  the  facts,  but  we  do  not  admit  them  in  the  same  rank. 

To  the  moral  law  in  the  reason  of  man  corresponds  liberty  in 
action.  Liberty  is  deduced  from  obligation,  and  moreover  it  is  a 
fact  of  an  irresistible  evidence. 

Man  as  a  being  free  and  subject  to  obligation,  is  a  moral  per- 
son. The  idea  of  person  contains  several  moral  notions,  among 
others  that  of  right.  Person  alone  can  have  rights. 

To  all  these  ideas  is  added  that  of  merit  and  demerit,  which 
serves  as  their  sanction. 

Merit  and  demerit  suppose  the  distinction  between  good  and 
evil,  obligation  and  liberty,  and  give  birth  to  the  idea  of  reward 
and  punishment. 

It  is  on  the  condition  that  the  good  may  be  an  object  of  reason, 
that  ethics  can  have  an  immovable  basis.  We  have  therefore 
insisted  on  the  rational  character  of  the  idea  of  the  good,  but 
without  misconceiving  the  part  of  sentiment. 

We  have  distinguished  that  particular  sensibility,  which  is 
stirred  in  us  in  the  train  of  reason  itself,  from  physical  sensibility, 
which  needs  an  impression  made  upon  the  organs  in  order  to  en- 
ter into  exercise. 

All  our  moral  judgments  are  accompanied  by  sentiments  that 
respond  to  them.  The  sight  of  an  action  which  we  judge  to  be 
good  gives  us  pleasure, — the  consciousness  of  having  performed 
an  obligatory  act,  and  of  having  performed  it  freely,  is  also  a 
pleasure;  the  judgment  of  merit  and  demerit  makes  our  hearts 
beat  by  taking  the  form  of  sympathy  and  benevolence. 

It  must  be  avowed  that  the  law  of  duty,  although  it  ought  to 
be  fulfilled  for  its  own  sake,  would  be  an  ideal  almost  inaccessible 
to  human  weakness,  if  to  its  austere  prescriptions  were  not  added 
some  inspiration  of  the  heart.  Sentiment  is  in  some  sort  a  nat- 
ural grace  that  has  been  given  us,  either  to  supply  the  light  of 
reason  that  is  sometimes  uncertain,  or  to  succor  the  will  wavering 
in  the  presence  of  an  obscure  or  painful  duty.  In  order  to  resist 
the  violence  of  culpable  passions,  the  aid  of  generous  passions  is 


TRUE   PRINCIPLES   OF  ETHICS.  297 

needed  ;  and  when  the  moral  law  exacts  the  sacrifice  of  natural 
sentiments,  of  the  sweetest  and  most  lively  instincts,  it  is  fortunate 
that  it  can  support  itself  on  other  sentiments,  or  other  instincts 
which  also  have  their  charm  and  their  force.  Truth  enlightens 
the  mind  ;  sentiment  warms  the  soul  and  leads  to  action.  It  is 
not  cold  reason  that  determines  a  Codrus  to  devote  himself  for  his 
countrymen,  a  d'Assas  to  utter,  beneath  the  steel  of  the  enemy, 
the  generous  cry  that  brings  him  death  and  saves  the  army.  Let 
us  guard  ourselves,  then,  from  weakening  the  authority  of  senti- 
ment ;  let  us  honor  and  sustain  enthusiasm ;  it  is  the  source 
whence  spring  great  and  heroic  actions. 

And  shall  interest  be  entirely  banished  from  our  system  ?  No ; 
we  recognize  in  the  human  soul  a  desire  for  happiness  which  is 
the  work  of  God  himself.  This  desire  is  a  fact, — it  must  then 
have  its  place  in  a  system  founded  upon  experience.  Happiness 
is  one  of  the  ends  of  human  nature ;  only  it  is  neither  its  sole 
end  nor  its  principal  end. 

Admirable  economy  of  the*  moral  constitution  of  man !  Its 
supreme  end  is  the  good,  its  law  is  virtue,  which  often  imposes 
on  it  suffering,  and  thereby  it  is  the  most  excellent  of  all  things 
that  we  know.  But  this  law  is  very  hard  and  in  contradiction 
with  the  instinct  of  happiness.  Fear  nothing, — the  beneficent 
author  of  our  being  has  placed  in  our  souls,  by  the  side  of  the 
severe  law  of  duty,  the  sweet  and  amiable  force  of  sentiment, — 
he  has,  in  general,  attached  happiness  to  virtue ;  and,  for  the  ex- 
ceptions, for  there  are  exceptions,  at  the  end  of  the  course  he  has 
placed  hope.1 

Our  doctrine  is  now  known.  Its  only  pretension  is  to  express 
faithfully  each  fact,  to  express  them  all,  and  to  make  appear  at 
once  their  differences  and  their  harmony. 

Beyond  that  there  is  nothing  new  to  attempt  in  ethics.  To 
admit  only  a  single  fact  and  to  sacrifice  to  that  all  the  rest, — such 
is  the  beaten  way.  Of  all  the  facts  that  we  have  just  analyzed, 

1  See  lecture  16. 


298  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

there  is  not  one  that  has  not  in  its  turn  played  the  part  of  sole 
principle.  All  the  great  schools  of  moral  philosophy  have  each 
seen  only  one  side  of  truth, — fortunate  when  they  have  not 
chosen  among  the  different  phases  of  the  moral  phenomenon,  in 
order  to  found  upon  them  their  entire  system,  precisely  those 
that  are  least  adapted  to  that  end ! 

Who  could  now  return  to  Epicurus,  and,  against  the  most 
manifest  facts,  against  common  sense,  against  the  very  idea  of  all 
ethics,  found  duty,  virtue,  the  good,  on  the  desire  of  happiness 
alone  ?  It  would  be  proof  of  great  blindness  and  great  barren- 
ness. On  the  other  hand,  shall  we  immolate  the  need  of  happi- 
ness, the  hope  of  all  reward,  human  or  divine,  to  the  abstract 
idea  of  the  good  ?  The  Stoics  have  done  it, — we  know  with  what 
apparent  grandeur,  with  what  real  impotence.  Shall  we  confine 
with  Kant  the  whole  of  ethics  to  obligation  ?  That  is  straitening 
still  more  a  system  that  is  already  very  narrow.  Moreover,  one 
may  hope  to  surpass  Kant  in  extent  of  views,  by  a  completer 
knowledge  and  more  faithful  representation  of  facts ;  one  cannot 
hope  to  be  more  profound  in  the  point  of  view  that  he  has 
chosen.  Or,  in  another  order  of  ideas,  shall  we  refer  to  the  will 
of  God  alone  the  obligation  of  virtue,  and  found  ethics  on  religion, 
instead  of  giving  religion  to  ethics  as  their  necessary  perfection  ? 
We  still  invent  nothing  new,  we  only  renew  the  ethics  of  the 
theologians  of  the  Middle  Age,  or  rather  of  a  particular  school 
which  has  had  for  its  adversaries  the  most  illustrious  doctors. 
Finally,  shall  we  reduce  all  morality  to  sentiment,  to  sympathy, 
to  benevolence  ?  It  only  remains  to  follow  the  footsteps  of  Hutch- 
eson  and  Smith,  abandoned  by  Reid  himself,  or  the  footsteps  of 
a  celebrated  adversary  of  Kant,  Jacobi.1 

The  time  of  exclusive  theories  has  gone  by ;  to  renew  ihem  is 
to  perpetuate  war  in  philosophy.  Each  of  them,  being  founded 
upon  a  real  fact,  rightly  refuses  the  sacrifice  of  this  fact ;  and  it 


1  On  Jacobi,  see  Tennemann's  Manual  of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  vol. 
iii.,  p.  318,  etc. 


TRUE    PRINCIPLES    OF    ETHICS.  299 

meets  in  hostile  theories  an  equal  right  and  an  equal  resistance. 
Hence  the  perpetual  return  of  the  same  systems,  always  at  war 
with  each  other,  and  by  turns  vanquished  and  victorious.  This 
strife  can  cease  only  by  means  of  a  doctrine  that  conciliates  all 
systems  by  comprising  all  the  facts  that  give  them  authority. 

It  is  not  the  preconceived  design  of  conciliating  systems  in  his- 
tory that  suggests  to  us  the  idea  of  conciliating  facts  in  reality. 
It  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  full  possession  of  all  the  facts,  analogous 
and  different,  that  forces  us  to  absolve  and  condemn  all  systems 
on  account  of  the  truth  that  is  in  each  of  them,  and  on  account 
of  the  errors  that  are  mixed  with  the  truth. 

It  is  important  to  repeat  continually,  that  nothing  is  so  easy  as 
to  arrange  a  system,  by  suppressing  or  altering  the  facts  that  em- 
barrass it.  But  is  it,  then,  the  object  of  philosophy  to  produce 
at  any  cost  a  system,  instead  of  seeking  to  understand  the  truth 
and  express  it  as  it  is  ? 

It  is  objected  that  such  a  doctrine  has  not  sufficient  character. 
But  is  it  not  sporting  with  philosophy  to  demand  of  it  any  other 
character  than  that  of  truth  ?  Do  men  complain  that  modern 
chemistry  has  not  sufficient  character,  because  it  limits  itself  to 
studying  facts  in  their  relations,  and  also  in  their  differences,  and 
because  it  does  not  end  at  a  single  substance  ?  The  only  true 
philosophy  that  is  proper  for  a  century  returned  from  all  exag- 
gerations, is  a  picture  of  human  nature  whose  first  merit  is  fidel- 
ity, which  must  offer  all  the  traits  of  the  original  in  their  right 
proportion  and  real  harmony.  The  unity  of  the  doctrine  that 
we  profess  is  in  that  of  the  human  soul,  whence  we  have  drawn 
it.  Is  it  not  one  and  the  same  being  that  perceives  the  good, 
that  knows  that  he  is  obligated  to  fulfil  it,  that  knows  that  he  is 
free  in  fulfilling  it,  that  loves  the  good,  and  judges  that  the  fulfil- 
ment or  violation  of  the  good  justly  brings  after  it  reward  or 
punishment,  happiness  or  misery?  We  draw,  then,  a  true  unity 
from  the  intimate  relation  between  all  the  facts  that,  as  we  have 
seen,  imply  and  sustain  each  other.  But  by  what  right  is  the 
unity  of  a  doctrine  placed  in  allowing  in  it  only  a  single  princi- 


300  LECTURE   FOURTEENTH. 

pie  ?  Such  a  unity  is  possible  only  in  those  regions  of  mathe- 
matical abstraction,  where  one  is  not  disturbed  by  what  is,  where 
one  retrenches  at  will  from  the  object  that  he  is  studying,  in  order 
to  simplify  it  continually,  where  every  thing  is  reduced  to  pure 
notions.  In  the  reality  all  is  determined,  and  consequently,  all 
is  complex.  A  science  of  facts  is  not  a  series  of  equations.  In 
it  must  be  found  again  the  life  that  is  in  things,  life  with  its  har- 
mony doubtless,  but  also  with  its  richness  and  diversity.1 

1  On  this  important  question  of  method,  see  lecture  12. 


LECTUKE  XV. 

PEIVATE   AND   PUBLIC   ETHICS. 

Application  of  the  preceding  principles. — General  formula  of  interest, — to 
obey  reason. — Rule  for  judging  whether  an  action  is  or  is  not  conformed 
to  reason, — to  elevate  the  motive  of  this  action  into  a  maxim  of  universal 
legislation. — Individual  ethics.  It  is  not  towards  the  individual,  but 
towards  the  moral  person  that  one  is  obligated.  Principle  of  all  individual 
duties, — to  respect  and  develop  the  moral  person. — Social  ethics, — duties 
of  justice  and  duties  of  charity. — Civil  society.  Government.  Law.  The 
right  to  punish. 

WE  know  that  there  is  moral  good  and  that  there  is  moral 
evil :  we  know  that  this  distinction  between  good  and  evil 
engenders  an  obligation,  a  law,  duty ;  but  we  do  not  yet  know 
what  our  duties  are.  The  general  principle  of  ethics  is  laid 
down ;  it  must  be  followed  at  least  into  its  most  important 
applications. 

If  duty  is  only  truth  become  obligatory,  and  if  truth  is  known 
only  by  reason,  to  obey  the  law  of  duty,  is  to  obey  reason. 

But  to  obey  reason  is  a  precept  very  vague  and  very  abstract : 
— how  can  we  be  sure  that  our  action  is  conformed  or  is  not  con- 
formed to  reason  ? 

The  character  of  reason  being,  as  we  have  said,  its  universality, 
action,  in  order  to  be  conformed  to  reason,  must  possess  some- 
thing universal ;  and  as  it  is  the  motive  itself  of  the  action  that 
gives  it  ife  morality,  it  is  also  the  motive  that  must,  if  the  action 
is  good,  reflect  the  character  of  reason,  i  By  what  sign,  then,  do 
you  recognize  that  an  action  is  conformed  to  reason,  that  it  is 
good  ?  By  the  sign  that  the  motive  of  this  action  being  general- 
ized, appears  to  you  a  maxim  of  universal  legislation,  which 


302  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

reason  imposes  upon  all  intelligent  and  free  beings.  If  you  are 
not  able  thus  to  generalize  the  motive  of  an  action,  and  if  it  is  the 
opposite  motive  that  appears  to  you  a  universal  maxim,  your 
action,  being  opposed  to  this  maxim,  is  thereby  proved  to  be  con- 
trary to  reason  and  duty, — it  is  bad.  ]  If  neither  the  motive  of 
your  action  nor  the  motive  of  the  opposite  action  can  be  erected 
into  a  universal  law,  the  action  is  neither  good  nor  bad,  it  is  in- 
different. Such  is  the  ingenious  measure  that  Kant  has  applied 
to  the  morality  of  actions.  It  makes  known  with  the  last  degree 
of  clearness  where  duty  is  and  where  it  is  not,  as  the  severe  and 
naked  form  of  syllogism,  being  applied  to  reasoning,  brings  out 
in  the  precisest  manner  its  error  or  its  truth. 

To  obey  reason, — such  is  duty  in  itself,  the  duty  superior  to  all 
other  duties,  giving  to  all  others  their  foundation,  and  being 
itself  founded  only  on  the  essential  relation  between  liberty  and 
reason. 

It  may  be  said  that  there  is  only  a  single  duty,  that  of  obeying 
reason.  But  man  having  different  relations,  this  single  and  gen- 
eral duty  is  determined  by  these  different  relations,  and  divided 
into  a  corresponding  number  of  particular  duties. 

Of  all  the  beings  that  we  know,  there  is  not  one  with  whom 
we  are  more  constantly  in  relation  than  with  ourselves.  The  ac- 
tions of  which  man  is  at  once  the  author  and  the  object,  have 
rules  as  well  as  other  actions.  Hence  that  first  class  of  duties 
which  are  called  the  duties  of  man  towards  himself. 

At  first  sight,  it  is  strange  that  man  should  have  duties  towards 
himself.  Man,  being  free,  belongs  to  himself.  What  is  most  to 
me  is  myself: — this  is  the  first  property  and  the  foundation  of  all 
other  properties.  Now,  is  it  not  the  essence  of  property  to  be  at 
the  free  disposition  of  the  proprietor,  and  consequently,  am  I  not 
able  to  do  with  myself  what  I  please  ? 

No ;  from  the  fact  that  man  is  free,  from  the  fact  that  he  be- 
longs only  to  himself,  it  must  not  be  concluded  that  he  has  over 
himself  all  power.  On  the  contrary,  indeed,  from  the  fact  alone 
that  he  is  endowed  with  liberty,  as  well  as  intelligence,  I  conclude 


PRIVATE   AND    PUBLIC   ETHICS.  303 

that  he  can  no  more  degrade  his  liberty  than  his  intelligence, 
without  transgressing.  It  is  a  culpable  use  of  liberty  to  abdicate 
it.  We  have  said  that  liberty  is  not  only  sacred  to  others,  but  is 
so  to  itself.  To  subject  it  to  the  yoke  of  passion,  instead  of  in- 
creasing it  under  the  liberal  discipline  of  duty,  is  to  abase  in  us 
what  deserves  our  respect  as  much  as  the  respect  of  others.  Man 
is  not  a  thing ;  it  has  not,  then,  been  permitted  him  to  treat  him- 
self as  a  thing. 

If  I  have  duties  towards  myself,  it  is  not  towards  myself  as  an 
individual,  it  is  towards  the  liberty  and  intelligence  that  make 
me  a  free  moral  person.  It  is  necessary  to  distinguish  closely  in 
us  what  is  peculiar  to  us  from  what  pertains  to  humanity.  Each 
one  of  us  contains  in  himself  human  nature  with  all  its  essential 
elements ;  and,  in  addition,  all  these  elements  are  in  him  in  a 
certain  manner  that  is  not  the  same  in  two  different  men.  These 
particularities  make  the  individual,  but  not  the  person ;  and  the 
person  alone  in  us  is  to  be  respected  and  held  as  sacred,  because 
it  alone  represents  humanity >>  Eveiy  thing  that  does  not  concern 
the  moral  person  is  indifferent.  In  these  limits  I  may  consult  my 
tastes,  even  my  fancies  to  a  certain  extent,  because  in  them  there 
is  nothing  absolute,  because  in  them  good  and  evil  are  in  no  way 
involved.  But  as  soon  as  an  act  touches  the  moral  person,  my 
liberty  is  subjected  to  its  law,  to  reason,  which  does  not  allow 
liberty  to  be  turned  against  itself.  For  example,  if  through  ca- 
price, or  melancholy,  or  any  other  motive,  I  condemn  myself  to 
an  abstinence  too  prolonged,  if  I  impose  on  myself  vigils  pro- 
tracted and  beyond  my  strength ;  if  I  absolutely  renounce  all 
pleasure,  and,  by  these  excessive  privations,  endanger  my  health, 
my  life,  my  reason,  these  are  no  longer  indifferent  actions.  Sick- 
ness, death,  madness,  may  become  crimes,  if  we  voluntarily  bring 
them  upon  ourselves. 

I  have  not  established  this  obligation  of  self-respect  imposed 
on  the  moral  person,  therefore  I  cannot  destroy  it.  Is  self-respect 
founded  on  one  of  those  arbitrary  conventions  that  cease  to  exist 
when  the  two  contracting  parties  freely  renounce  them  2  Are  the 


304:  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

two  contracting  parties  here  me  and  myself?  By  no  means ;  one 
of  the  contracting  parties  is  not  me,  to  wit,  humanity,  the  moral 
person.  And  there  is  here  neither  convention  nor  contract.  By 
the  fact  alone  that  the  moral  person  is  in  us,  we  are  obligated 
towards  it,  without  convention  of  any  sort,  without  contract  that 
can  be  cancelled,  and  by  the  very  nature  of  .things.  Hence  it 
comes  that  obligation  is  absolute. 

Respect  of  the  moral  person  in  us  is  the  general  principle 
whence  are  derived  all  individual  duties.  We  will  cite  some  of 
them. 

The  most  important,  that  which  governs  all  others,  is  the  duty 
of  remaining  master  of  one's  self.  One  may  lose  possession  of 
himself  in  two  ways,  either  by  allowing  himself  to  be  carried 
away,  or  by  allowing  himself  to  be  overcome,  by  yielding  to 
enervating  passions  or  to  overwhelming  passions,  to  anger  or  to 
melancholy.  On  either  hand  there  is  equal  weakness.  And  I 
do  not  speak  of  the  consequences  of  those  vices  for  society  and 
ourselves, — certainly  they  are  very  injurious  ;  but  they  are  much 
worse  than  that,  they  are  already  bad  in  themselves,  because  in 
themselves  they  give  a  blow  to  moral  dignity,  because  they  dimin- 
ish liberty  and  disturb  intelligence. 

Prudence  is  an  eminent  virtue.  I  speak  of  that  noble  pru- 
dence that  is  the  moderation  in  all  things,  the  foresight,  the  fit- 
ness, that  preserve  at  once  from  negligence  and  that  rashness 
which  adorns  itself  with  the  name  of  heroism,  as  cowardice  and 
selfishness  sometimes  usurp  the  name  of  prudence.  Heroism, 
without  being  premeditated,  ought  always  to  be  rational.  One 
may  be  a  hero  at  intervals ;  but,  in  every-day  life,  it  is  sufficient 
to  be  a  wise  man.  We  must  ourselves  hold  the  reins  of  our  life, 
and  not  prepare  difficulties  for  ourselves  by  carelessness  or  bra- 
vado, nor  create  for  ourselves  useless  perils.  Doubtless  we  must 
know  how  to  dare,  but  still  prudence  is,  if  not  the  principle,  at 
least  the  rule  of  courage ;  for  true  courage  is  not  a  blind  transport, 
it  is  before  all  coolness  and  self-possession  in  danger.  Prudence 
also  teaches  temperance ;  it  keeps  the  soul  in  that  state  of  mod- 


PRIVATE   AND   PUBLIC   ETHICS.  305 

eration  without  which  man  is  incapable  of  recognizing  and  prac- 
tising justice.  This  is  the  .reason  why  the  ancients  said  that  pru- 
dence is  the  mother  and  guardian  of  all  the  virtues.  Prudence 
is  the  government  of  liberty  by  reason,  as  imprudence  is  liberty 
escaped  from  reason : — on  th«  one  side,  order,  the  legitimate  sub- 
ordination of  our  faculties  to  each  other ;  on  the  other,  anarchy 
and  revolt.1 

Veracity  is  also  a  great  virtue.  Falsehood,  by  breaking  the 
natural  alliance  between  man  and  truth,  deprives  him  of  that 
which  makes  his  dignity.  This  is  the  reason  why  there  is  no 
graver  insult  than  giving  the  lie,  and  why  the  most  honored  vir- 
tues are  sincerity  and  frankness. 

One  may  degrade  the  moral  person  by  wounding  it  in  its  in- 
struments. For  this  reason  the  body  is  to  man  the  object  of  im- 
perative duties.  The  body  may  become  an  obstacle  or  a  means. 
If  you  refuse  it  what  sustains  and  strengthens  it,  or  if  you  demand 
too  much  from  it  by  exciting  it  beyond  measure,  you  exhaust  it, 
and  by  abusing  it,  deprive  yourself  of  it.  It  is  worse  still  if  you 
pamper  it,  if  you  grant  every  thing  to  its  unbridled  desires,  if  you 
make  yourself  its  slave.  It  is  being  unfaithful  to  the  soul  to  en- 
feeble its  servant ;  it  is  being  much  more  unfaithful  to  it  still,  to 
enslave  it  to  its  servant. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  respect  the  moral  person,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  perfect  it ;  it  is  necessary  to  labor  to  return  the  soul  to 
God  better  than  we  received  it ;  and  it  can  become  so  only  by  a 
constant  and  courageous  exercise.  Everywhere  in  nature,  all 
things  are  spontaneously  developed,  without  willing  it,  and  with- 
out knowing  it.  With  man,  if  the  will  slumbers,  the  other  facul- 
ties degenerate  into  languor  and  inertion ;  or,  carried  away  by 
the  blind  impulse  of  passion,  they  are  precipitated  and  go 
astray.  It  is  by  the  government  and  education  of  himself  that 
man  is  great. 

Man  must,  before  every  thing  else,  occupy  himself  with  his 

1  See  the  Republic,  book  iv.,  vol.  ix.,  of  our  translation. 


306  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

intelligence.  It  is  in  fact  our  intelligence  that  alone  can  give  us 
a  clear  sight  of  the  true  and  the  good,  that  guides  liberty  by 
showing  it  the  legitimate  object  of  its  efforts.  No  one  can  give 
himself  another  mind  than  the  one  that  he  has  received,  but  he 
may  train  and  strengthen  it  as  well  as  the  body,  by  putting  it  to 
a  task  of  some  kind,  by  rousing  it  when  it  is  drowsy,  by  restrain- 
ing it  when  it  is  carried  away,  by  continually  proposing  to  it  new 
objects, — for  it  is  only  by  continually  enriching  it  that  it  does 
not  grow  poor.  Sloth  benumbs  and  enervates  the  mind ;  reg- 
ular work  excites  and  strengthens  it,  and  work  is  always  in  our 
power. 

There  is  an  education  of  liberty  as  well  as  our  other  faculties. 
It  is  sometimes  in  subduing  the  body,  sometimes  in  governing 
our  intelligence,  especially  in  resisting  our  passions,  that  we  learn 
to  be  free.  We  encounter  opposition  at  each  step, — the  only 
question  is  not  to  shun  it.  In  this  constant  struggle  liberty  is 
formed  and  augmented,  until  it  becomes  a  habit. 

Finally,  there  is  a  culture  of  sensibility  itself.  Fortunate  are 
those  who  have  received  from  nature  the  sacred  fire  of  enthusi- 
asm !  They  ought  religiously  to  preserve  it.  But  there  is  no 
soul  that  does  not  conceal  some  fortunate  vein  of  it.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  watch  it  and  pursue,  to  avoid  what  restrains  it,  to  seek 
what  favors  it,  and,  by  an  assiduous  culture,  draw  from  it,  little 
by  little,  some  treasures.  If  we  cannot  give  ourselves  sensibility, 
we  can  at  least  develop  what  we  have.  We  can  do  this  by  giv- 
ing oui-selves  up  to  it,  by  seizing  all  the  occasions  of  giving 
ourselves  up  to  it,  by  calling  to  its  aid  intelligence  itself;  for, 
the  more  we  know  of  the  beautiful  and  the  good,  the  more 
we  love  it.  Sentiment  thereby  only  borrows  from  intelligence 
what  it  returns  with  usury.  Intelligence  in  its  turn  finds,  in 
the  heart,  a  rampart  against  sophism.  Noble  sentiments,  nour- 
ished and  developed,  preserve  from  those  sad  systems  that 
please  certain  spirits  so  much  only  because  their  hearts  are  so 
small. 

Man  would  still  have  duties,  should  he  cease  to  be  in  relation 


PRIVATE    AND    PUBLIC    ETHICS.  307 

with  other  men.1  As  long  as  he  preserves  any  intelligence  and  any 
liberty,  the  idea  of  the  good  dwells  in  him,  and  with  it  duty. 
Were  we  cast  upon  a  desert  island,  duty  would  follow  us  thither. 
It  would  be  beyond  belief  strange  that  it  should  be  in  the  power 


1  On  our  principal  duties  towards  ourselves,  and  on  that  error,  too  much 
accredited  in  the  eighteenth  century,  of  reducing  ethics  to  our  duties  towards 
others,  see  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lectures  on  the  ethics  of  Helvetius  and  Saint- 
Lambert,  lecture  vi.,  p.  235 :  "  To  define  virtue  an  habitual  disposition  to  con- 
tribute to  the  happiness  of  others,  is  to  concentrate  virtue  into  a  single  one 
of  its  applications,  is  to  suppress  its  general  and  essential  character.  Therein 
is  the  fundamental  vice  of  the  ethics  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Those 
ethics  are  an  exaggerated  reaction  against  the  somewhat  mystical  ethics  of 
the  preceding  age,  which,  rightly  occupied  with  perfecting  the  internal  man, 
often  fell  into  asceticism,  which  is  not  only  useless  to  others,  but  is  contrary  to 
well-ordered  human  life.  Through  fear  of  asceticism,  the  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century  forgot  the  care  of  internal  perfection,  and  only  considered 
the  virtues  useful  to  society.  That  was  retrenching  many  virtues,  and  the 
best  ones.  I  take,  for  example,  dominion  over  self.  How  make  a  virtue  of 
it,  when  virtue  is  defined  a  disposition  to  contribute  to  the  happiness  of  others  ? 
Will  it  be  said  that  dominion  over  self  is  useful  to  others  ?  But  that  is  not 
always  true ;  often  this  dominion  is  exercised  in  the  solitude  of  the  soul  over 
internal  and  wholly  personal  movements ;  and  there  it  is  most  painful  and 
most  sublime.  Were  we  in  a  desert,  it  would  still  be  for  us  a  duty  to  resist 
our  passions,  to  command  ourselves,  and  to  govern  our  life  as  it  becomes  a 
rational  and  free  being.  Beneficence  is  an  adorable  virtue,  but  it  is  neither 
the  whole  of  virtue,  nor  its  most  difficult  employment.  Wha.t  auxiliaries  we 
have  when  the  question  is  to  do  good  to  our  fellow-creatures, — pity,  syinp(i- 
thy,  natural  benevolence !  But  to  resist  pride  and  envy,  to  combat  in  the 
depths  of  the  soul  a  natural  desire  legitimate  in  itself,  often  culpable  in  its 
excesses,  to  suffer  and  struggle  in  silence,  is  the  hardest  task  of  a  virtuous 
man.  I  add  that  the  virtues  useful  to  others  have  their  surest  guaranty  in 
those  personal  virtues  that  the  eighteenth  century  misconceived.  What  are 
goodness,  generosity,  and  beneficence  without  dominion  over  self,  without 
the  form  of  soul  attached  to  the  religious  observance  of  duty  ?  They  are, 
perhaps,  only  the  emotions  of  a  beautiful  nature  placed  in  fortunate  circum- 
stances. Take  away  these  circumstances,  and,  perhaps,  the  effects  will  dis- 
appear or  be  diminished.  But  when  a  man,  who  knows  himself  to  be  a 
rational  and  free  being,  comprehends  that  it  is  his  duty  to  remain  faithful  to 
liberty  and  reason,  when  he  applies  himself  to  govern  himself,  and  pursue, 
without  cessation,  the  perfection  of  his  nature  through  all  circumstances, 
you  may  rely  upon  that  man ;  he  will  know  how,  in  case  of  need,  to  be  useful 
to  others,  because  there  is  no  true  perfection  for  him  without  justice  and 
charity.  From  the  care  of  internal  perfection  you  may  draw  all  the  useful 
virtues,  but  the  reciprocal  is  not  always  true.  One  may  be  beneficent  with- 
out being  virtuous ;  one  is  not  virtuous  without  being  beneficent." 


308  LECTTTBE   FIFTEENTH. 

of  certain  external  circumstances  to  affranchise  an  intelligent  and 
free  being  from  all  obligation  towards  his  liberty  and  his  intelli- 
gence. In  the  deepest  solitude  he  is  always  and  consciously 
under  the  empire  of  a  law  attached  to  the  person  itself,  which,  by 
obligating  him  to  keep  continual  watch  over  himself,  makes  at 
once  his  torment  and  his  grandeur. 

If  the  moral  person  is  sacred  to  me,  it  is  not  .because  it  is  in 
me,  it  is  because  it  is  the  moral  person ;  it  is  in  itself  respectable  ; 
it  will  be  so,  then,  wherever  we  meet  it. 

It  is  in  you  as  in  me,  and  for  the  same  reason.  In  relation 
to  me  it  imposes  on  me  a  duty ;  in  you  it  becomes  the  founda- 
tion of  a  right,  and  thereby  imposes  on  me  a  new  duty  in  relation 
to  you. 

I  owe  to  you  truth  as  I  owe  it  to  myself ;  for  truth  is  the  law 
of  your  reason  as  of  mine.  Without  doubt  there  ought  to  be 
measure  in  the  communication  of  truth, — all  are  not  capable  of 
it  at  the  same  moment  and  in  the  same  degree ;  it  is  necessary  to 
portion  it  out  to  them  in  order  that  they  may  be  able  to  receive 
it ;  but,  in  fine,  the  truth  is  the  proper  good  of  the  intelligence  ; 
and  it  is  for  me  a  strict  duty  to  respect  the  development  of  your 
mind,  not  to  arrest,  and  even  to  favor  its  progress  towards  truth. 

I  ought  also  to  respect  your  liberty.  I  have  not  even  always 
the  right  to  hinder  you  from  committing  a  fault.  Liberty  is  so 
sacred  that,  even  when  it  goes  astray,  it  still  deserves,  up  to  a  cer- 
tain point,  to  be  managed.  We  are  often  wrong  in  wishing,  to 
prevent  too  much  the  evil  that  God  himself  permits.  Souls  may 
be  corrupted  by  an  attempt  to  purify  them. 

I  ought  to  respect  you  in  your  affections,  which  make  part  of 
yourself;  and  of  all  the  affections  there  are  none  more  holy  than 
those  of  the  family.  There  is  in  us  a  need  of  expanding  ourselves 
beyond  ourselves,  yet  without  dispelling  ourselves,  of  establishing 
ourselves  in  some  souls  by  a  regular  and  consecrated  affection, — 
to  this  need  the  family  responds.  The  love  of  men  is  something 
of  the  general  good.  The  family  is  still  almost  the  individual, 
and  not  merely  the  individual, — it  only  requires  us  to  love  as 


PRIVATE   AND   PUBLIC   ETHICS.  309 

much  as  ourselves  what  is  almost  ourselves.  It  attaches  one  to 
the  other,  by  the  sweetest  and  strongest  of  all  ties — father, 
mother,  child ;  it  gives  to  this  sure  succor  in  the  love  of  its  pa- 
rents— to  these  hope,  joy,  new  life,  in  their  child.  To  violate  the 
conjugal  or  paternal  right,  is  to  violate  the  person  in  what  is 
perhaps  its  most  sacred  possession. 

I  ought  to  respect  your  body,  inasmuch  as  it  belongs  to  you, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  the  necessary  instrument  of  your  person.  I 
have  neither  the  right  to  kill  you,  nor  to  wound  you,  unless  I  am 
attacked  and  threatened ;  then  my  violated  liberty  is  armed  with 
a  new  right,  the  right  of  defence  and  even  constraint. 

I  owe  respect  to  your  goods,  for  they  are  the  product  of 
your  labor ;  I  owe  respect  to  your  labor,  which  is  your  liberty 
itself  in  exercise ;  and,  if  your  goods  come  from  an  inheritance, 
I  still  owe  respect  to  the  free  will  that  has  transmitted  them  to 
you.1 

Respect  for  the  rights  of  others  is  called  justice ;  every  viola- 
tion of  a  right  is  an  injustice. 

Every  injustice  is  an  encroachment  upon  our  person, — to  re- 
trench the  least  of  our  rights,  is  to  diminish  our  moral  person,  is, 
at  least,  so  far  as  that  retrenchment  goes,  to  abase  us  to  the  con- 
dition of  a  thing. 

The  greatest  of  all  injustices,  because  it  comprises  all  others,  is 
slavery.  Slavery  is  the  subjecting  of  all  the  faculties  of  one  man 
to  the  profit  of  another  man.  The  slave  develops  his  intelligence 
a  little  only  in  the  interest  of  another, — it  is  not  for  the  purpose 
of  enlightening  him,  but  to  render  him  more  useful,  that  some 
exercise  of  mind  is  allowed  him.  The  slave  has  not  the  liberty 
of  his  movements ;  he  is  attached  to  the  soil,  is  sold  with  it,  or 
he  is  chained  to  the  person  of  a  master.  The  slave  should  have 
no  affection,  he  has  no  family,  no  wife,  no  children, — he  has  a 
female  and  little  ones.  His  activity  does  not  belong  to  him,  for 
the  product  of  his  labor  is  another's.  But,  that  nothing  may 

1  On  the  true  foundation  of  property  see  the  preceding  lecture. 


310  LECTURE    FIFTEENTH. 

be  wanting  to  slavery,  it  is  necessary  to  go  farther, — in  the  slave 
must  be  destroyed  the  inborn  sentiment  of  liberty,  in  him  must 
be  extinguished  all  idea  of  right ;  for,  as  long  as  this  idea  subsists, 
slavery  is  uncertain,  and  to  an  odious  power  may  respond  the 
terrible  right  of  insurrection,  that  last  resort  of  the  oppressed 
against  the  abuse  of  force.1 

Justice,  respect  for  the  person  in  every  thing  that  constitutes 
the  person,  is  the  first  duty  of  man  towards  his  fellow-man.  Is 
this  duty  the  only  one  \ 

When  we  have  respected  the  person  of  others,  when  we  have 
neither  restrained  their  liberty,  nor  smothered  their  intelligence, 
nor  maltreated  their  body,  nor  outraged  their  family,  nor  injured 
their  goods,  are  we  able  to  say  that  we  have  fulfilled  the  whole 
law  in  regard  to  them  ?  One  who  is  unfortunate  is  suffering  be- 
fore us.  Is  our  conscience  satisfied,  if  we  are  able  to  bear  witness 
to  ourselves  that  we  have  not  contributed  to  his  sufferings  ?  No ; 
something  tells  that  it  is  still  good  to  give  him  bread,  succor, 
consolation. 

There  is  here  an  important  distinction  to  be  made.  If  you 
have  remained  hard  and  insensible  at  the  sight  of  another's 
miseiy,  conscience  cries  out  against  you ;  and  yet  this  man  who 


1  Voluntary  servitude  is  little  better  than  servitude  imposed  by  force.  See 
1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  4,  p.  240 :  "Had  another  the  desire  to  serve  us  as 
a  slave,  without  conditions  and  without  limits,  to  be  for  us  a  thing  for  our 
use,  a  pure  instrument,  a  staff,  a  vase,  and  had  we  also  the  desire  to  make 
use  of  him  in  this  manner,  and  to  let  him  serve  us  in  the  same  way,  this  reci- 
procity of  desires  would  authorize  for  neither  of  us  this  absolute  sacrifice, 
because  desire  can  never  be  the  title  of  a  right,  because  there  is  something 
in  us  that  is  above  all  desires,  participated  or  not  participated,  to  wit,  duty 
and  right,— justice.  To  justice  it  belongs  to  be  the  rule  of  our  desires,  and 
not  to  our  desires  to  be  the  rule  of  justice.  Should  entire  humanity  forget 
its  dignity,  should  it  consent  to  its  own  degradation,  should  it  extend  the 
hand  to  slavery,  tyranny  would  be  none  the  more  legitimate  ;  eternal  justice 
would  protest  against  a  contract,  which,  were  it  supported  by  desires,  recip- 
rocal desires  most  authentically  expressed  and  converted  into  solemn  laws, 
is  none  the  less  void  of  all  right,  because,  as  Bossuet  very  truly  said,  there 
is  no  right  against  right,  no  contracts,  no  conventions,  no  human  laws 
against  the  law  of  laws,  against  natural  law." 


PRIVATE   AND    PUBLIC    ETHICS.  311 

is  suffering,  who,  perhaps,  is  ready  to  die,  has  not  the  least  right 
over  the  least  part  of  your  fortune,  were  it  immense ;  and,  if  he 
used  violence  for  the  purpose  of  wresting  from  you  a  single 
penny,  he  would  commit  a  crime.  We  here  meet  a  new  order  of 
duties  that  do  not  correspond  to  rights.  Man  may  resort  to  force 
in  order  to  make  his  rights  respected ;  he  cannot  impose  on  an- 
other any  sacrifice  whatever.  Justice  respects  or  restores ;  charity 
gives,  and  gives  freely. 

Charity  takes  from  us  something  in  order  to  give  it  to  our 
fellow-men.  If  it  goes  so  far  as  to  inspire  us  to  renounce  our 
dearest  interests,  it  is  called  devotedness. 

It  certainly  cannot  be  said  that  to  be  charitable  is  not  obliga- 
tory. But  this  obligation  must  not  be  regarded  as  precise,  as  in- 
flexible as  the  obligation  to  be  just.  Charity  is  a  sacrifice;  and 
who  can  find  the  rule  of  sacrifice,  the  formula  of  self-renunciation  ? 
For  justice,  the  formula  is  clear, — to  respect  the  rights  of  another. 
But  charity  knows  neither  rule  nor  limit.  It  transcends  all  obli- 
gation. Its  beauty  is  precisely  in  its  liberty. 

But  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  charity  also  has  its  dangers. 
It  tends  to  substitute  its  own  action  for  the  action  of  him  whom 
it  wishes  to  help  ;  it  somewhat  effaces  his  personality,  and  makes 
itself  in  some  sort  his  providence, — a  formidable  part  for  a  mor- 
tal !  In  order  to  be  useful  to  others,  one  imposes  himself  on 
them,  and  runs  the  risk  of  violating  their  natural  rights.  Love, 
in  giving  itself,  enslaves.  Doubtless  it  is  not  interdicted  us  to 
act  upon  another.  We  can  always  do  it  through  petition  and 
exhortation.  We  can  also  do  it  by  threatening,  when  we  see  one 
of  our  fellows  engaged  in  a  criminal  or  senseless  action.  We 
have  even  the  right  to  employ  force  when  passion  carries  away 
liberty  and  makes  the  person  disappear.  So  we  may,  we  even 
ought  to  prevent  by  force  the  suicide  of  one  of  our  fellow-men. 
The  legitimate  power  of  charity  is  measured  by  the  more  or  less 
liberty  and  reason  possessed  by  him  to  whom  it  is  applied. 
What  delicacy,  then,  is  necessary  in  the  exercise  of  this  perilous 
virtue !  How  can  we  estimate  with  sufficient  certainty  the  de- 


312  LECTURE    FIFTEENTH. 

gree  of  liberty  still  possessed  by  one  of  our  fellow-men  to  know 
how  far  we  may  substitute  ourselves  for  him  in  the  guiding  of 
his  destiny  ?  And  when,  in  order  to  assist  a  feeble  soul,  we  take 
possession  of  it,  who  is  sufficiently  sure  of  himself  not  to  go  far- 
ther, not  to  pass  from  the  person  governed  to  the  love  of  domina- 
tion itself?  Charity  is  often  the  commencement  and  the  excuse, 
and  always  the  pretext  of  usurpation.  In  order  to  have  the 
right  of  abandoning  one's  self  to  the  emotions  of  charity,  it  is 
necessary  to  be  fortified  against  one's  self  by  a  long  exercise  of 
justice. 

To  respect  the  rights  of  others  and  do  good  to  men,  to  be  at 
once  just  and  charitable, — such  are  social  ethics  in  the  two  ele- 
ments that  constitute  them. 

We  speak  of  social  ethics,  and  we  do  not  yet  know  what 
society  is.  Let  us  look  around  us  : — everywhere  society  exists, 
and  where  it  is  not,  man  is  not  man.  Society  is  a  universal  fact 
which  must  have  universal  foundations. 

Let  us  avoid  at  first  the  question  of  the  origin  of  society.1 


1  On  the  danger  of  seeking  at  first  the  origin  of  human  knowledge,  see  1st 
Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  on  Hobbes,  p.  261 :  "  Hobbes  is  not  the  only  one  who 
took  the  question  of  the  origin  of  societies  as  the  starting-point  of  political 
science.  Nearly  all  the  publicists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Montesquieu 
excepted,  proceed  in  the  same  manner.  Konsseau  imagines  at  first  a  primi- 
tive state  in  which  man  being  no  longer  savage  without  being  yet  civilized, 
lived  happy  and  free  under  the  dominion  of  the  laws  of  nature.  This  golden 
age  of  humanity  disappearing  carries  with  it  all  the  rights  of  the  individual, 
who  enters  naked  and  disarmed  into  what  we  call  the  social  state.  But  order 
cannot  reign  in  a  state  without  laws,  and  since  natural  laws  perished  in  the 
shipwreck  of  primitive  manners,  new  ones  must  be  created.  Society  is 
formed  by  aid  of  a  contract  whose  principle  is  the  abandonment  by  each  and 
all  of  their  individual  force  and  rights  to  the  profit  of  the  community,  of  the 
state,  the  instrument  of  all  forces,  the  depository  of  all  rights.  The  state,  for 
Hobbes,  will  be  a  man,  a  monarch,  a  king ;  for  Eousseau,  the  state  is  the  col- 
lection itself  of  citizens,  who  by  turns  are  considered  as  subjects  and  govern- 
ors, so  that  instead  of  the  despotism  of  one  over  all,  we  have  the  despotism 
of  all  over  each.  Law  is  not  the  more  or  less  happy,  more  or  less  faithful 
expression  of  natural  justice  ;  it  is  the  expression  of  the  general  will.  This 
general  will  is  alone  free  ;  particular  wills  are  not  free.  The  general  will  has 
all  rights,  and  particular  wills  have  only  the  rights  that  it  confers  on  them, 
or  rather  lends  them.  Force,  in  The  Citizen,  is  the  foundation  of  society,  of 


PRIVATE  AND  PUBLIC  ETHICS.  313 

The  philosophy  of  the  last  century  delighted  in  such  questions  too 
much.  How  can  we  demand  light  from  the  regions  of  darkness, 
and  the  explanation  of  reality  from  an  hypothesis  ?  Why  go  back 
to  a  pretended  primitive  state  in  order  to  account  for  a  present 
state  which  may  be  studied  in  itself  in  its  unquestionable  char- 
acters ?  Why  seek  what  may  have  been  in  the  germ  that 
which  may  be  perceived,  that  which  it  is  the  question  to  under- 
stand, completed  and  perfect  ?  Moreover,  there  is  great  peril  in 
starting  with  the  question  of  the  origin  of  society.  Has  such  or 
such  an  origin  been  found  ?  Actual  society  is  arranged  accord- 
ing to  the  type  of  the  primitive  society  that  has  been  dreamed 
of,  and  political  society  is  delivered  up  to  the  mercy  of  histori- 
cal romances.  This  one  imagines  that  the  primitive  state  is 
violence,  and  he  sets  out  from  that  in  order  to  authorize  the 
right  of  the  strongest,  and  to  consecrate  despotism.  That 
one  thinks  that  he  has  found  in  the  family  the  first  form  of 
society,  and  he  compares  government  to  the  father  of  a  family, 
and  subjects  to  children  ;  society  in  his  eyes  is  a  minor  that  must 
be  held  in  tutelage  in  the  hands  of  the  paternal  power,  which  in 
the  origin  is  absolute,  and  consequently,  must  remain  so.  Or 
has  one  thrown  himself  to  the  extreme  of  the  opposite  opinion, 
and  into  the  hypothesis  of  an  agreement,  of  a  contract  that  ex- 
presses the  will  of  ah1  or  of  the  greatest  number  ?  He  delivers 


order,  of  laws,  of  the  rights  and  duties  which  laws  alone  institute.  In  the 
Central  Social,  the  general  will  plays  the  same  part,  fulfils  the  same  function. 
Moreover,  the  general  will  scarcely  differs  in  itself  from  force.  In  fact,  the 
general  will  is  number,  that  is  to  say,  force  still.  Thus,  on  both  sides, 
tyranny  under  different  forms.  One  may  here  observe  the  power  of  method. 
If  Hobbes,  if  Kousseau  especially  had  at  first  studied  the  idea  of  right  in  it- 
self, with  the  certain  characters  without  which  we  are  not  able  to  conceive 
it,  they  would  have  infallibly  recognized  that  if  there  are  rights  derivei  from 
positive  laws,  and  particularly  from  conventions  and  contracts,  there  are 
rights  derived  from  no  contract,  since  contracts  take  them  for  principles  and 
rules ;  from  no  convention,  since  they  serve  as  the  foundation  to  all  conven- 
tions in  order  that  these  conventions  may  be  reputed  just;— rights  that 
society  consecrates  and  develops,  but  does  not  make, — rights  not  subject  to 
the  caprices  of  general  or  particular  will,  belonging  essentially  to  human 
nature,  and  like  it,  inviolable  and  sacred." 


314  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

up  to  the  mobile  will  of  the  crowd  the  eternal  laws  of  justice  and 
the  inalienable  rights  of  the  person.  Finally,  are  powerful  reli- 
gious institutions  found  in  the  cradle  of  society?  It  is  hence 
concluded,  that  power  belongs  of  right  to  priesthoods,  which  have 
the  secret  of  the  designs  of  God,  and  represent  his  sovereign 
authority.  Thus  a  vicious  method  in  philosophy  leads  to  a  de- 
plorable political  system, — the  commencement  is  made  in  hy- 
pothesis, and  the  termination  is  in  anarchy  or  tyranny. 

True  politics  do  not  depend  on  more  or  less  well  directed  his- 
torical researches  into  the  profound  night  of  a  past  forever 
vanished,  and  of  which  no  vestige  subsists:  they  rest  on  the 
knowledge  of  human  nature. 

Wherever  society  is,  wherever  it  was,  it  has  for  its  foundations  : 
— 1st,  The  need  that  we  have  of  our  fellow-creatures,  and  the 
social  instincts  that  man  bears  in  himself;  2d,  The  permanent 
and  indestructible  idea  and  sentiment  of  justice  and  right. 

Man,  feeble  and  powerless  when  he  is  alone,  profoundly  feels 
the  need  that  he  has  of  the  succor  of  his  fellow-creatures  in 
order  to  develop  his  faculties,  to  embellish  his  life,  and  even  to 
preserve  it.1  Without  reflection,  without  convention,  he  claims 


1  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  p.  265 :  "  What !"  somewhere  says  Montesquieu, 
"  man  is  everywhere  in  society,  and  it  is  asked  whether  man  was  born  for 
society !  "What  is  this  fact  that  is  reproduced  in  all  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
life  of  humanity,  except  a  law  of  humanity?  The  universal  and  permanent 
fact  of  society  attests  the  principle  of  sociability.  This  principle  shines  forth 
in  all  our  inclinations,  in  our  sentiments,  in  our  beliefs.  It  is  true  that  we 
love  society  for  the  advantages  that  it  brings ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  true, 
that  we  also  love  it  for  its  own  sake,  that  we  seek  it  independently  of  all  cal- 
culation. Solitude  saddens  us ;  it  is  not  less  deadly  to  the  life  of  the  moral 
being,  than  a  perfect  vacuum  is  to  the  life  of  the  physical  being.  Without 
society  what  would  become  of  sympathy,  which  is  one  of  the  most  powerful 
principles  of  our  soul,  which  establishes  between  men  a  community  of  sen- 
timents, by  which  each  lives  in  all  and  all  live  in  each  ?  Who  would  be 
blind  enough  not  to  see  in  that  an  energetic  call  of  human  nature  for  society  ? 
And  the  attraction  of  the  sexes,  their  union,  the  love  of  parents  for  children, 
— do  they  not  found  a  sort  of  natural  society,  that  is  increased  and  developed 
by  the  power  of  the  same  causes  which  produced  it  ?  Divided  by  interest, 
united  by  sentiment,  men  respect  each  other  in  the  name  of  justice.  Let  us 
add  that  they  love  each  other  in  virtue  of  natural  charity.  In  the  sight  of 


PRIVATE   AND   PUBLIC    ETHICS.  315 

the  hand,  the  experience,  the  love  of  those  whom  he  sees  made 
like  himself.  The  instinct  of  society  is  in  the  first  cry  of  the 
child  that  calls  for  the  mother's  help  without  knowing  that  it  has 
a  mother,  and  in  the  eagerness  of  the  mother  to  respond  to  the 
cries  of  the  child.  It  is  in  the  feelings  for  others  that  nature  has 
put  in  us — pity,  sympathy,  benevolence.  It  is  in  the  attraction 
of  the  sexes,  in  their  union,  in  the  love  of  parents  for  their  chil- 
dren, and  in  the  ties  of  every  kind  that  these  first  ties  engender. 
If  Providence  has  attached  so  much  sadness  to  solitude,  so  much 
charm  to  society,  it  is  because  society  is  indispensable  for  the 
preservation  of  man  and  for  his  happiness,  for  his  intellect  and 
moral  development. 

But  if  need  and  instinct  begin  society,  it  is  justice  that  com- 
pletes it. 

In  the  presence  of  another  man,  without  any  external  law, 
without  any  compact,1  it  is  sufficient  that  I  know  that  he  is  a 
man,  that  is  to  say,  that  he  is  intelligent  and  free,  in  order  to 
know  that  he  has  rights,  and  to  know  that  I  ought  to  respect  his 


justice,  equal  in  right,  charity  inspires  us  to  consider  ourselves  as  brethren, 
and  to  give  each  other  succor  and  consolation.  Wonderful  thing !  God 
has  not  left  to  our  wisdom,  nor  even  to  experience,  the  care  of  forming  and 
preserving  society, — he  has  willed  that  sociability  should  be  a  law  of  our 
nature,  and  a  law  so  imperative  that  no  tendency  to  isolation,  no  egoism,  no 
distaste  even,  can  prevail  against  it.  All  the  power  of  the  spirit  of  system 
was  necessary  in  order  to  make  Hobbes  say  that  society  is  an  accident,  as  an 
incredible  degree  of  melancholy  to  wring  from  Kousseau  the  extravagant  ex- 
pression that  society  is  an  evil." 

1  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  p.  283 :  "  We  do  not  hold  from  a  compact  our  quality 
as  man,  and  the  dignity  and  rights  attached  to  it ;  or,  rather,  there  is  an  im- 
mortal compact  which  is  nowhere  written,  which  makes  itself  felt  by  every 
uncorrupted  conscience,  that  compact  which  binds  together  all  beings  in- 
telligent, free,  and  subject  to  misfortune,  by  the  sacred  ties  of  a  common 
respect  and  a  common  charity.  .  .  .  Laws  promulgate  duties,  but  do 
not  give  birth  to  them ;  they  could  not  violate  duties  without  being  unjust, 
and  ceasing  to  merit  the  beautiful  name  of  laws— that  is  to  say,  decisions  of 
the  public  authority  worthy  of  appearing  obligatory  to  the  conscience  of  all. 
Nevertheless,  although  laws  have  no  other  virtue  than  that  of  declaring 
what  exists  before  them,  we  often  found  on  them  right  and  justice,  to  the 
great  detriment  of  justice  itself,  and  the  sentiment  of  right.  Time  and 
habit  despoil  reason  of  its  natural  rights  in  order  to  transfer  it  to  law.  What 


316  LECTURE  FIFTEENTH. 

rights  as  he  ought  to  respect  mine.  As  he  is  no  freer  than  I  am, 
nor  I  than  he,  we  recognize  towards  each  other  equal  rights  and 
equal  duties.  If  he  abuses  his  force  to  violate  the  equality  of  our 
rights,  I  know  that  I  have  the  right  to  defend  myself  and  make 
myself  respected ;  and  if  a  third  party  is  found  between  us,  with- 
out any  personal  interest  in.  the  quarrel,  he  knows  that  it  is  his 
right  and  his  duty  to  use  force  in  order  to  protect  the  feeble,  and 
even  to  make  the  oppressor  expiate  his  injustice  by  a  chastise- 
ment. Therein  is  already  seen  entire  society  with  its  essential 
principles, — justice,  liberty,  equality,  government,  and  punishment. 

Justice  is  the  guaranty  of  liberty.  True  liberty  does  not  con- 
sist in  doing  what  we  will,  but  in  doing  what  we  have  a  right  to 
do.  Liberty  of  passion  and  caprice  would  have  for  its  conse- 
quence the  enslavement  of  the  weakest  to  the  strongest,  and  the 
enslavement  of  the  strongest  themselves  to  their  unbridled  de- 
sires. Man  is  truly  free  in  the  interior  of  his  consciousness  only 
in  resisting  passion  and  obeying  justice ;  therein  also  is  the  type 
of  true  social  liberty.  Nothing  is  falser  than  the  opinion  that 
society  diminishes  our  mutual  liberty  ;  far  from  that,  it  secures  it, 
develops  it :  what  it  suppresses  is  not  liberty ;  it  is  its  opposite, 
passion.  Society  no  more  injures  liberty  than  justice,  for  society 
is  nothing  else  than  the  very  idea  of  justice  realized. 

In  securing  liberty,  justice  secures  equality  also.  If  men  are 
unequal  in  physical  force  and  intelligence,  they  are  equal  in  so 
far  as  they  are  free  beings,  and  consequently  equally  worthy  of 
respect.  All  men,  when  they  bear  the  sacred  character  of  the 
moral  person,  are  to  be  respected,  by  the  same  title,  and  in  the 
same  degree.1 


then  happens  ?  We  either  obey  it,  even  when  it  is  unjust,  which  is  not  a 
very  great  evil,  but  we  do  not  think  of  reforming  it  little  by  little,  having 
no  superior  principle  that  enables  us  to  judge  it, — or  we  continually  change 
it,  in  an  invincible  impotence  of  founding  any  thing,  by  not  knowing  the 
immutable  basis  on  which  written  law  must  rest.  In  either  case,  all  pro- 
gress is  impossible,  because  the  laws  are  not  related  to  their  true  principle, 
which  is  reason,  conscience,  sovereign  and  absolute  justice." 
1  Lecture  12. 


PRIVATE   AND   PUBLIC   ETHICS.  317 

The  limit  of  liberty  is  in  liberty  itself;  the  limit  of  right  is  in 
duty.  Liberty  is  to  be  respected,  but  provided  it  injure  not  the 
liberty  of  another.  I  ought  to  let  you  do  what  you  please,  but 
on  the  condition  that  nothing  which  you  do  will  injure  my 
liberty.  For  then,  in  virtue  of  my  right  of  liberty,  I  should  re- 
gard myself  as  obligated  to  repress  the  aberrations  of  your  will, 
in  order  to  protect  my  own  and  that  of  others.  Society  guaran- 
ties the  liberty  of  each  one,  and  if  one  citizen  attacks  that  of 
another,  he  is  arrested  in  the  name  of  liberty.  For  example,  re- 
ligious liberty  is  sacred ;  you  may,  in  the  secret  of  consciousness, 
invent  for  yourself  the  most  extravagant  superstition ;  but  if  you 
wish  publicly  to  inculcate  an  immoral  worship,  you  threaten  the 
liberty  and  reason  of  your  citizens :  such  preaching  is  interdicted. 

From  the  necessity  of  repressing  springs  the  necessity  of  a  con- 
stituted repressive  force. 

Rigorously,  this  force  is  in  us  ;  for  if  I  am  unjustly  attacked, 
I  have  the  right  to  defend  myself.  But,  in  the  first  place,  I  may 
not  be  the  strongest ;  in  the  second  place,  no  one  is  an  impartial 
judge  in  his  own  cause,  and  what  I  regard  or  give  out  as  an  act 
of  legitimate  defence  may  be  an  act  of  violence  and  oppression. 

So  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  each  one  demands  an  im- 
partial and  disinterested  force,  that  may  be  superior  to  all  partic- 
ular forces. 

This  disinterested  party,  armed  with  the  power  necessary  to 
secure  and  defend  the  liberty  of  all,  is  called  government. 

The  right  of  government  expresses  the  rights  of  all  and  each. 
It  is  the  right  of  personal  defence  transferred  to  a  public  force,  to 
the  profit  of  common  liberty. 

Government  is  not,  then,  a  power  distinct  from  and  independent 
of  society  ;  it  draws  from  society  its  whole  force.  It  is  not  what 
it  has  seemed  to  two  opposite  schools  of  publicists, — to  those 
who  sacrifice  society  to  government, — to  those  who  consider  gov- 
ernment as  the  enemy  of  society.  If  government  did  not  repre- 
sent society,  it  would  be  only  a  material,  illegitimate,  and  soon 
powerless  force ;  and  without  government,  society  would  be  a  war 


318 


LECTURE    FIFTEENTH. 


of  all  against  all.  Society  makes  the  moral  power  of  government, 
as  government  makes  the  security  of  society.  Pascal  is  wrong1 
when  he  says,  that  not  being  able  to  make  what  is  just  powerful, 
men  have  made  what  is  powerful  just.  Government,  in  principle 
at  least,  is  precisely  what  Pascal  desired, — justice  armed  with 
force. 

It  is  a  sad  and  false  political  system  that  places  society  and 
government,  authority  and  liberty,  in  opposition  to  each  other, 
by  making  them  come  from  two  different  sources,  by  presenting 
them  as  two  contrary  principles.  I  often  hear  the  principle  of 
authority  spoken  of  as  a  principle  apart,  independent,  deriving 
from  itself  its  force  and  legitimacy,  and  consequently  made  to 
rule.  No  error  is  deeper  and  more  dangerous.  Thereby  it  is 
thought  to  confirm  the  principle  of  authority ;  far  from  that,  from 
it  is  taken  away  its  solidest  foundation.  Authority — that  is  to 
say,  legitimate  and  moral  authority — is  nothing  else  than  justice, 
and  justice  is  nothing  else  than  the  respect  of  liberty ;  so  that 
there  is  not  therein  two  different  and  contrary  opinions,  but  one 
and  the  same  principle,  of  equal  certainty  and  equal  grandeur, 
under  all  its  forms  and  in  all  its  applications. 

Authority,  it  is  said,  comes  from  God  :  doubtless;  but  whence 
comes  liberty,  whence  comes  humanity  ?  To  God  must  be  re- 
ferred every  thing  that  is  excellent  on  the  earth  ;  and  nothing  is 
more  excellent  than  liberty.  Reason,  which  in  man  commands 
liberty,  commands  it  according  to  its  nature ;  and  the  first  law 
that  reason  imposes  on  liberty  is  that  of  self-respect. 

Authority  is  so  much  the  stronger  as  its  true  title  is  better  un- 
derstood ;  and  obedience  is  the  easiest  when,  instead  of  degrading, 
it  honors ;  when,  instead  of  resembling  servitude,  it  is  at  once  the 
condition  and  guaranty  of  liberty. 

The  mission,  the  end  of  government,  is  to  make  justice,  the 
protector  of  the  common  liberty,  reign.  Whence  it  follows,  that 
as  long  as  the  liberty  of  one  citizen  does  not  injure  the  liberty  of 

1  See  4th  Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  40. 


PRIVATE   AND   PUBLIC   ETHICS.  319 

another,  it  escapes  all  repression.  So  government  cannot  be 
severe  against  falsehood,  intemperance,  imprudence,  levity,  ava- 
rice, egoism,  except  when  these  vices  become  prejudicial  to  others. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  necessary  to  confine  government  within  too 
narrow  limits.  Government,  which  represents  society,  is  also  a 
moral  person ;  it  has  a  heart  like  the  individual ;  it  has  generos- 
ity, goodness,  charity.  There  are  legitimate,  and  even  universally 
admired  facts,  that  are  not  explained,  if  the  function  of  govern- 
ment is  reduced  to  the  protection  of  rights  alone.1  Government 
owes  to  the  citizens,  in  a  certain  measure,  to  guard  their  well- 
being,  to  develop  their  intelligence,  to  fortify  their  morality,  for 
the  interest  of  society,  and  even  for  the  interest  of  humanity. 
Hence  sometimes  for  government  the  formidable  right  of  using 
force  in  order  to  do  good  to  men.  But  we  are  here  touching 
upon  that  delicate  point  where  charity  inclines  to  despotism.  Too 
much  intelligence  and  wisdom,  therefore,  cannot  be  demanded 
in  the  employment  of  a  power  perhaps  necessary,  but  dangerous. 

Now,  on  what  condition  is  government  exercised  ?  Is  an  act 
of  its  own  will  sufficient  for  it  in  order  to  employ  to  its  own 
liking  under  all  circumstances,  as  it  shall  understand  them,  the 
power  that  has  been  confided  to  it?  Government  must  have 
been  thus  exercised  in  early  society,  and  in  the  infancy  of  the  art 
of  governing.  But  the  power,  exercised  by  men,  may  go  astray 
in  different  ways,  either  through  weakness  or  through  excess  of 
force.  It  must,  then,  have  a  rule  superior  to  itself,  a  public  and 
known  rule,  that  may  be  a  lesson  for  the  citizens,  and  for  the 
government  a  rein  and  support :  that  rule  is  called  law. 

Universal  and  absolute  law  is  natural  justice,  which  cannot  be 
written,  but  speaks  to  the  reason  and  heart  of  all.  Written  laws 
are  the  formulas  wherein  it  is  sought  to  express,  with  the  least 


1  See  our  pamphlet  entitled  Justice  and  Charity,  composed  in  1848,  in  the 
midst  of  the  excesses  of  socialism,  in  order  to  remind  of  the  dignity  of  lib- 
erty, the  character,  bearing,  and  the  impassable  limits  of  true  charity,  pri- 
vate and  civil. 


LECTURE  FIFTEENTH. 

possible  imperfection,  what  natural  justice  requires  in  such  or 
such  determined  circumstances. 

If  laws  propose  to  express  in  each  thing  natural  justice,  which 
is  universal  and  absolute  justice,  one  of  the  necessaiy  conditions 
of  a  good  law  is  the  universality  of  its  character.  It  is  necessary 
to  examine  in  an  abstract  and  general  manner  what  is  required 
by  justice  in  such  or  such  a  case,  to  the  end  that  this  case  being 
presented  may  be  judged  according  to  the  rule  laid  down,  with- 
out regard  to  circumstances,  place,  time,  or  person. 

The  collection  of  those  rules  or  laws  that  govern  the  social  re- 
lations of  individuals  is  called  positive  right.  Positive  right  rests 
wholly  on  natural  right,  which  at  once  serves  as  its  foundation, 
measure,  and  limit.  The  supreme  law  of  every  positive  law  is 
that  it  be  not  opposed  to  natural  law :  no  law  can  impose  on  us 
a  false  duty,  nor  deprive  us  of  a  true  right. 

The  sanction  of  law  is  punishment.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  right  to  punish  springs  from  the  idea  of  demerit.1  In 


1  See  on  the  theory  of  penalty,  the  Gorgias,  vol.  iii.  of  the  translation  of 
Plato,  and  our  argument,  p.  367  :  "  The  first  law  of  order  is  to  be  faithful  to 
virtue,  and  to  that  part  of  virtue  which  is  related  to  society,  to  wit,  justice ; 
but  if  one  is  wanting  in  that,  the  second  law  of  order  is  to  expiate  one's 
fault,  and  it  is  expiated  by  punishment.  Publicists  are  still  seeking  the 
foundation  of  penalty.  Some,  who  think  themselves  great  politicians,  find 
it  in  the  utility  of  the  punishment  for  those  who  witness  it,  and  are  turned 
aside  from  crime  by  fear  of  its  menace,  by  its  preventive  virtue.  And  that 
it  is  true,  is  one  of  the  effects  of  penalty,  but  it  is  not  its  foundation;  for 
punishment  falling  upon  the  innocent,  would  produce  as  much,  and  still 
more  terror,  and  would  be  quite  as  preventive.  Others,  in  their  preten- 
sions to  humanity,  do  not  wish  to  see  the  legitimacy  of  punishment  except 
in  its  utility  for  him  who  undergoes  it,  in  its  corrective  virtue, — and  that, 
too,  is  one  of  the  possible  effects  of  punishment,  but  not  its  foundation ;  for 
that  punishment  may  be  corrective,  it  must  be  accepted  as  just.  It  is,  then, 
always  necessary  to  recur  to  justice.  Justice  is  the  true  foundation  of  pun- 
ishment,— personal  and  social  utility  are  only  consequences.  It  is  an  incon- 
testable fact,  that  after  every  unjust  act,  man  thinks,  and  cannot  but  think 
that  he  has  incurred  demerit,  that  is  to  say,  has  merited  a  punishment.  In 
intelligence,  to  the  idea  of  injustice  corresponds  that  of  penalty ;  and  when 
injustice  has  taken  place  in  the  social  sphere,  merited  punishment  ought  to 
be  inflicted  by  society.  Society  can  inflict  it  only  because  it  ought.  Eight 
here  has  no  other  source  than  duty,  the  strictest,  most  evident,  and  most 


PRIVATE    AND    PUBLIC     KTIIICS.  321 

the  universal  order,  to  God  alone  it  belongs  to  apply  a  punish- 
ment to  all  faults,  whatever  they  may  be.  In  the  social  order, 
government  is  invested  with  the  right  to  punish  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  protecting  liberty  by  imposing  a  just  reparation  on  those 
who  violate  it.  Every  fault  that  is  not  contrary  to  justice,  and 
does  not  strike  at  liberty,  escapes,  then,  social  retribution.  Neither 
is  the  right  to  punish  the  right  of  avenging  one's  self.  To  render 
evil  for  evil,  to  demand  an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  is 
the  barbarous  form  of  a  justice  without  light ;  for  the  evil  that  I 
do  you  will  not  take  away  the  evil  that  you  have  done  me.  It 
is  not  the  pain  felt  by  the  victim  that  demands  a  corresponding 
pain ;  it  is  violated  justice  that  imposes  on  the  culpable  man  the 
expiation  of  suffering.  Such  is  the  morality  of  penalty.  The 
principle  of  penalty  is  not  the  reparation  of  damage  caused.  If 
I  have  caused  you  damage  without  intending  it,  I  pay  you  an 
indemnity  ;  that  is  not  a  penalty,  for  I  am  not  culpable  ;  whilst 
if  I  have  committed  a  crime,  in  spite  of  the  material  indemnity 
for  the  evil  that  I  have  done,  I  owe  a  reparation  to  justice  by  a 
proper  suffering,  and  in  that  truly  consists  the  penalty. 

What  is  the  exact  proportion  of  chastisements  and  crimes  ? 
This  question  cannot  receive  an  absolute  solution.  What  is  here 
immutable,  is  that  the  act  opposed  to  justice  merits  a  punishment, 
and  that  the  more  unjust  the  act  is,  the  severer  ought  to  be  the 
punishment.  But  by  the  side  of  the  right  to  punish  is  the  duty 
of  correcting.  To  the  culprit  must  be  left  the  possibility  of  re- 


sacred  duty,  without  which  this  pretended  right  would  be  only  that  offeree, 
that  is  to  say,  an  atrocious  injustice,  should  it  even  result  in  the  moral  profit 
of  him  who  undergoes  it,  and  in  a  salutary  spectacle  for  the  people, — what 
it  would  not  then  be;  for  then  the  punishment  would  find  no  sympathy,  no 
echo,  either  in  the  public  conscience  or  in  that  of  the  condemned.  The  pun- 
ishment is  not  just,  because  it  is  preventively  or  correctively  useful ;  but 
it  is  in  both  ways  useful,  because  it  is  just.  This  theory  of  penalty,  in  de- 
monstrating the  falsity,  the  incomplete  and  exclusive  character  of  two  theo- 
ries that  divide  publicists,  completes  and  explains  them,  and  gives  them 
both  a  legitimate  centre  and  base.  It  is  doubtless  only  indicated  in  Plato, 
but  is  met  in  several  passages,  briefly  but  positively  expressed,  and  on  it 
rests  the  sublime  theory  of  expiation. 

u* 


322  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

pairing  his  crime.  The  culpable  man  is  still  a  man ;  he  is  not  a 
thing  of  which  we  ought  to  rid  ourselves  as  soon  as  it  becomes 
injurious,  a  stone  that  falls  on  our  heads,  that  we  throw  into  a 
gulf  that  it  may  wound  no  more.  Man  is  a  rational  being,  capa- 
ble of  comprehending  good  and  evil,  of  repenting,  and  of  being 
one  day  reconciled  with  order.  These  truths  have  given  birth  to 
works  that  honor  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth.  The  conception  of  houses  of  correction 
reminds  one  of  those  early  times  of  Christianity  when  punishment 
consisted  in  an  expiation  that  permitted  the  culprit  to  return 
through  repentance  to  the  ranks  of  the  just.  Here  intervenes,  as 
we  have  just  indicated,  the  principle  of  charity,  which  is  very 
different  from  the  principle  of  justice.  To  punish  is  just,  to 
ameliorate  is  charitable.  In  what  measure  ought  those  two 
principles  to  be  united  ?  Nothing  is  more  delicate,  more  difficult 
to  determine.  It  is  certain  that  justice  ought  to  govern.  In  un- 
dertaking the  amendment  of  the  culprit,  government  usurps, 
with  a  very  generous  usurpation,  the  rights  of  religion ;  but  it 
ought  not  to  go  so  far  as  to  forget  its  proper  function  and  its  rig- 
orous duty. 

Let  us  pause  on  the  threshold  of  politics,  properly  so  called. 
Nothing  in  them  but  these  principles  is  fixed  and  invariable ;  all 
else  is  relative.  The  constitutions  of  states  have  something  abso- 
lute by  their  relation  to  the  inviolable  rights  which  they  ought  to 
guarantee ;  but  they  also  have  a  relative  side  by  the  variable 
forms  with  which  they  are  clothed,  according  to  times,  places, 
manners,  history.  The  supreme  rule  of  which  philosophy  re- 
minds politics,  is  that  politics  ought,  in  consulting  all  circum- 
stances, to  seek  always  those  social  forms  and  institutions  that 
best  realize  those  eternal  principles.  Yes.  they  are  eternal ;  be- 
cause they  are  drawn  from  no  arbitrary  hypothesis,  because  they 
rest  on  the  immutable  nature  of  man,  on  the  all-powerful  instincts 
of  the  heart,  on  the  indestructible  notion  of  justice,  and  the  sub- 
lime idea  of  charity,  on  the  consciousness  of  person,  liberty,  and 
equality,  on  duty  and  right,  on  merit  and  demerit.  Such  are  the 


PKIYATE   AND    PUBLIC   ETHICS.  323 

foundations  of  all  true  society,  worthy  of  the  beautiful  name  of 
human  society,  that  is  to  say,  formed  of  free  and  rational  beings ; 
and  such  are  the  maxims  that  ought  to  direct  every  govern- 
ment worthy  of  its  mission,  which  knows  that  it  is  not  deal- 
ing with  beasts  but  with  men,  which  respects  them  and  loves 
them. 

Thank  God,  French  society  has  always  marched  by  the  light 
of  this  immortal  idea,  and  the  dynasty  that  has  been  at  its  head 
for  some  centuries  has  always  guided  it  in  these  generous  ways. 
It  was  Louis  le  Gros,  who,  in  the  Middle  Age,  emancipated  the 
communes ;  it  was  Philippe  le  Bel  who  instituted  parliaments — 
an  independent  and  gratuitous  justice ;  it  was  Henri  IV.  who 
began  religious  liberty ;  it  was  Louis  XIII.  and  Louis  XIV.  who, 
while  they  undertook  to  give  to  France  her  natural  frontiers,  and 
almost  succeeded  in  it,  labored  to  unite  more  and  more  all  parts 
of  the  nation,  to  put  a  regular  administration  in  the  place  of 
feudal  anarchy,  and  to  reduce  the  great  vassals  to  a  simple  aris- 
tocracy, from  day  to  day  deprived  of  every  privilege  but  that  of 
serving  the  common  country  in  the  first  rank.  It  was  a  king  of 
France  who,  comprehending  the  new  wants,  and  associating  him- 
self with  the  progress  of  the  times,  attempted  to  substitute  for 
that  very  real,  but  confused  and  formless  representative  govern- 
ment, that  was  called  the  assemblies  of  the  nobility,  the  clergy, 
and  the  tiers  €tat,  the  true  representative  government  that  is 
proper  for  great  civilized  nations, — a  glorious  and  unfortunate 
attempt  that,  if  royalty  had  then  been  served  by  a  Richelieu,  a 
Mazarin,  or  a  Colbert,  might  have  terminated  in  a  necessary  re- 
form, that,  through  the  fault  of  every  one,  ended  in  a  revolution 
full  of  excess,  violence,  and  crime,  redeemed  and  covered  by  an 
incomparable  courage,  a  sincere  patriotism,  and  the  most  brilliant 
triumphs.  Finally,  it  was  the  brother  of  Louis  XVI.  who,  en- 
lightened and  not  discouraged  by  the  misfortunes  of  his  family, 
spontaneously  gave  to  France  that  liberal  and  wise  constitution 
of  which  our  fathers  had  dreamed,  about  which  Montesquieu  had 
written,  which,  loyally  adhered  to,  and  necessarily  developed,  is 


324  LECTURE   FIFTEENTH. 

admirably  fitted  for  the  present  time,  and  sufficient  for  a  long 
future.  We  are  fortunate  in  finding  in  the  Charter  the  principles 
that  we  have  just  explained,  that  contain  our  views  and  our 
hopes  for  France  and  humanity.1 


5  As  it  is  perceived,  we  have  confined  ourselves  to  the  most  general  prin- 
ciples. The  following  year,  in  1819,  in  our  lectures  on  Hobbes,  1st  Series, 
vol.  iii.,  we  gave  a  more  extended  theory  of  rights,  and  the  civil  and  politi- 
ed  guaranties  which  they  demand ;  we  even  touched  the  question  of  the 
different  forms  of  government,  and  established  the  truth  and  beauty  of  the 
constitutional  monarchy.  In  1828,  2d  Series,  vol.  i.,  lecture  13,  we  explained 
and  defended  the  Charter  in  its  fundamental  parts.  Under  the  government 
of  July,  the  part  of  defender  of  both  liberty  and  royalty  was  easy.  We  con- 
tinued it  in  1848  ;  and  when,  at  the  unexpected  inundation  of  democracy, 
soon  followed  by  a  passionate  reaction  in  favor  of  an  absolute  authority, 
many  minds,  and  the  best,  asked  themselves  whether  the* young  American 
republic  was  not  called  to  serve  as  a  model  for  old  Europe,  we  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  maintain  the  principle  of  the  monarchy  in  the  interest  of  liberty;  we 
helieve  that  we  demonstrated  that  the  development  of  the  principles  of  1789, 
And  in  particular  the  progress  of  the  lower  classes,  so  necessary,  can  be  ob- 
tained only  by  the  aid  of  the  constitutional  monarchy, — 6th  Series,  POLITICAL 
DISCOURSES,  with  an  introduction  on  (he  principles  of  tJte  French  Revolution 
and  representative  government. 


LECTUKE    XVI. 

GOD   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF  THE   IDEA   OF  THE   GOOD. 

Principle  on  which  true  theodicea  rests.  God  the  last  foundation  of  moral 
truth,  of  the  good,  and  of  the  moral  person. — Liberty  of  God. — The  divine 
justice  and  charity. — God  the  sanction  of  the  moral  law.  Immortality  of 
the  soul;  argument  from  merit  and  demerit ;  argument  from  the  simplicity 
of  the  soul;  argument  from  final  causes. — Religious  sentiment. — Adora- 
tion.— Worship. — Moral  beauty  of  Christianity. 

THE  moral  order  has  been  confirmed, — we  are  in  possession  of 
moral  truth,  of  the  idea  of  the  good,  and  the  obligation  that  is 
attached  to  it.  Now,  the  same  principle  that  has  not  permitted 
us  to  stop  at  absolute  truth,1  and  has  forced  us  to  seek  its  supreme 
reason  in  a  real  and  substantial  being,  forces  us  here  again 
to  refer  the  idea  of  the  good  to  the  being  who  is  its  first  and  last 
foundation. 

Moral  truth,  like  every  other  universal  and  necessary  truth, 
cannot  remain  in  a  state  of  abstraction.  In  us  it  is  only  conceived. 
There  must  somewhere  be  a  being  who  not  only  conceives  it,  but 
constituted  it. 

As  all  beautiful  things  and  all  true  things  are  related — these 
to  a  unity  that  is  absolute  truth,  and  those  to  another  unity  that 
is  absolute  beauty,  so  all  moral  principles  participate  in  the  same 
principle,  which  is  the  good.  We  thus  elevate  ourselves  to  the 
conception  of  the  good  in  itself,  of  absolute  good,  superior  to  all 
particular  duties,  and  determined  in  these  duties.  Now,  can  the 
absolute  good  be  any  thing  else  than  an  attribute  of  him  who, 
properly  speaking,  is  alone  absolute  being  ? 

1  Lectures  4  and  7. 


326  LECTURE   SIXTEENTH. 

Would  it  be  possible  that  there  might  be  several  absolute 
beings,  and  that  the  being  in  whom  are  realized  absolute  truth 
and  absolute  beauty  might  not  also  be  the  one  who  is  the  princi- 
ple of  absolute  good  ?  The  very  idea  of  the  absolute  implies 
absolute  unity.  The  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  are  not 
three  distinct  essences  ;  they  are  one  and  the  same  essence  con- 
sidered in  its  fundamental  attributes.  Our  mind  distinguishes 
them,  because  it  can  comprehend  them  only  by  division ;  but,  in 
the  being  in  whom  they  reside,  they  are  indivisibly  united ;  and 
this  being  at  once  triple  and  one,  who  sums  up  in  himself  perfect 
beauty,  perfect  truth,  and  the  supreme  good,  is  nothing  else  than 
God. 

So  God  is  necessarily  the  principle  of  moral  truth  and  the 
good.  He  is  also  the  type  of  the  moral  person  that  we  carry 
in  us. 

Man  is  a  moral  person,  that  is  to  say,  he  is  endowed  with  rea- 
son and  liberty.  He  is  capable  of  virtue,  and  virtue  has  in  him 
two  principal  forms,  respect  of  others,  and  love  of  others,  justice 
and  charity. 

Can  there  be  among  the  attributes  possessed  by  the  creature 
something  essential  not  possessed  by  the  Creator  ?  Whence  does 
the  effect  draw  its  reality  and  its  being,  except  from  its  cause  ? 
What  it  possesses,  it  borrows  and  receives.  The  cause  at  least 
contains  all  that  is  essential  in  the  effect.  What  particularly 
belongs  to  the  effect,  is  inferiority,  is  a  lack,  is  imperfection :  from 
the  fact  alone  that  it  is  dependent  and  derived,  it  bears  in  itself 
the  signs  and  the  conditions  of  dependence.  If,  then,  we  cannot 
legitimately  conclude  from  the  imperfection  of  the  effect  in  that 
of  the  cause,  we  can  and  must  conclude  from  the  excellence  of 
the  effect  in  the  perfection  of  the  cause,  otherwise  there  would 
be  something  prominent  in  the  effect  which  would  be  without 
cause. 

Such  is  the  principle  of  our  theodicea.  It  is  neither  new  nor 
subtle ;  but  it  has  not  yet  been  thoroughly  disengaged  and  eluci- 
dated, and  it  is,  to  our  eyes,  firm  against  every  test.  It  is  by  the 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE   OF  THE    IDEA   OF   THE   GOOD.     327 

aid  of  this  principle  that  we  can,  up  to  a  certain  point,  penetrate 
into  the  true  nature  of  God. 

God  is  not  a  being  of  logic,  whose  nature  can  be  explained  by 
way  of  deduction,  and  by  means  of  algebraic  equations.  When, 
setting  out  from  a  first  attribute,  we  have  deduced  the  attributes 
of  God  from  each  other,  after  the  manner  of  geometricians  and 
the  schoolmen,  what  do  we  possess,1 1  pray  you,  but  abstractions  ? 
It  is  necessary  to  leave  these  vain  dialectics  in  order  to  arrive  at 
a  real  and  living  God. 

The  first  notion  that  we  have  of  God,  to  wit,  the  notion  of  an 
infinite  being,  is  itself  given  to  us  independently  of  all  experience. 
It  is  the  consciousness  of  ourselves,  as  being  at  once,  and  as  being 
limited,  that  elevates  us  directly  to  the  conception  of  a  being  who 
is  the  principle  of  our  being,  and  is  himself  without  bounds. 
This  solid  and  simple  argument,  which  is  at  bottom  that  of  Des- 
cartes,4 opens  to  us  a  way  that  must  be  followed,  in  which  Des- 
cartes too  quickly  stopped.  If  the  being  that  we  possess  forces 
us  to  recur  to  a  cause  which  possesses  being  in  an  infinite  degree, 
all  that  we  have  of  being,  that  is  to  say,  of  substantial  attributes, 
equally  requires  an  infinite  cause.  Then,  God  will  no  longer  be 
merely  the  infinite,  abstract,  or  at  least  indeterminate  being  in 
which  reason  and  the  heart  know  not  where  to  betake  themselves,8 

1  Such  is  the  common  vice  of  nearly  all  theodiceas,  without  excepting  the 
best — that  of  Leibnitz,  that  of  Clarke;  even  the  most  popular  of  all,  the  Pro- 
fession de  Foi  du  Vicaire  Savoyard.  See  our  small  work  entitled  Philosophic 
Populaire,  3d  edition,  p.  82. 

*  On  the  Cartesian  argument,  see  above,  part  1st,  lecture  4 ;  see  also  1st 
Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  12,  and  especially  vol.  v.,  lecture  6. 

8  Fragments  de  Philosophic  Cartesis.nnt,  p.  24:  "The  infinite  being,  inas- 
much as  infinite,  is  not  a  mover,  a  cause ;  neither  is  he,  inasmuch  as  infinite, 
an  intelligence;  neither  is  he  a  will ;  neither  is  he  a  principle  of  justice,  nor 
much  less  a  principle  of  love.  "We  have  no  right  to  impute  to  him  all  these 
attributes  in  virtue  of  the  single  argument  that  every  contingent  being  sup- 
poses a  being  that  is  not  so,  that  every  finite  supposes  an  infinite.  The  God 
given  by  this  argument  is  the  God  of  Spinoza,  is  rigorously  so ;  but  he  is 
almost  as  though  he  were  not,  at  least  for  us  who  with  difficulty  perceive 
him  in  the  inaccesible  heights  of  an^eternity  and  existence  that  are  absolute, 
void  of  thought,  of  liberty,  of  love,  similar  to  nonentity  itself,  and  a  thou- 
sand times  inferior,  in  his  infinity  and  eternity,  to  an  hour  of  our  finite  and 


328  LECTURE   SIXTEENTH. 

he  will  be  a  real  and  determined  being,  a  moral  person  like  ours ; 
and  psychology  conducts  us  without  hypothesis  to  a  theodicea  at 
once  sublime  and  related  to  us.1 

Before  all,  if  man  is  free,  can  it  be  that  God  is  not  free  ?  No 
one  contends  that  he  who  is  cause  of  all  causes,  who  has  no 
cause  but  himself,  can  be  dependent  on  any  thing  whatever. 
But  in  freeing  God  from  all  external  constraint,  Spinoza  subjects 
him  to  an  internal  and  mathematical  necessity,  wherein  he  finds 
the  perfection  of  being.  Yes,  of  being  which  is  not  a  person ; 
but  the  essential  character  of  personal  being  is  precisely  liberty. 
If,  then,  God  were  not  free,  God  would  be  beneath  man.  Would 
it  not  be  strange  that  the  creature  should  have  the  marvellous 
power  of  disposing  of  himself,  and  of  freely  willing,  and  that 
the  being  who  has  made  him  should  be  subjected  to  a  neces- 
sary development,  whose  cause  is  only  in  himself,  without  doubt, 
but,  in  fine,  is  a  sort  of  abstract  power,  mechanical  or  metaphys- 
ical, but  very  inferior  to  the  personal  and  voluntary  cause  that 
we  are,  and  of  which  we  have  the  clearest  consciousness  ?  God 
is  therefore  free,  since  we  are  free.  But  he  is  not  free  as  we  are 
free ;  for  God  is  at  once  all  that  we  are,  and  nothing  that  we 
are.  He  possesses  the  same  attributes  that  we  possess,  but  ele- 
vated to  infinity.  He  possesses  an  infinite  liberty,  joined  to  an 
infinite  intelligence ;  and,  as  his  intelligence  is  infallible,  excepted 
from  the  uncertainties  of  deliberation,  and  perceiving  at  a  glance 
where  the  good  is,  so  his  liberty  spontaneously,  and  without 
effort,  fulfils  it.s 


perishable  existence,  if  during  this  fleeting  hour  we  know  what  we  are,  if  we 
think,  if  we  love  something  else  than  ourselves,  if  we  feel  capable  of  freely 
sacrificing  to  an  idea  the  few  minutes  that  have  been  accorded  to  us." 

1  This  theodicea  is  here  in  resume,  and  in  the  4th  and  5th  lectures  of  part 
first,  as  well  as  in  the  lecture  that  follows.    The  most  important  of  our  dif- 
ferent writings,  on  this  point,  will  be  found  collected  and  elucidated  by  each 
other,  in  the  Appendix  to  the  5th  lecture  of  the  first  volume  of  the  1st  Series. 
— See  our  translation  of  this  entire  Series  of  M.  Cousin's  works,  under  the 
title  of  the  History  of  Modern  Philosophy. 

2  3d  Series,  vol.  iv.,  advertisement  to  the  3d  edition :    "  Without  vain 
snbtilty,  there  is  a  real  distinction  between  free  will  and  spontaneous  liber 


GOD    THE    PRINCIPLE   OF   THE    IDEA   OF   THE    GOOD.      329 

In  the  same  manner  as  we  transfer  to  God  the  liberty  that,  is 
the  foundation  of  our  being,  we  also  transfer  to  him  justice  and 
charity.  In  man,  justice  and  charity  are  virtues;  in  God,  they 
are  attributes.  What  is  in  us  the  laborious  conquest  of  liberty, 


ty.  Arbitrary  freedom  is  volition  with  the  appearance  of  deliberation  be- 
tween different  objects,  and  under  this  supreme  condition,  that  when,  as  a 
consequence  of  deliberation,  we  resolve  to  do  this  or  that,  we  have  the  im- 
mediate consciousness  of  having  been  able,  and  of  being  able  still,  to  will 
the  contrary.  It  is  in  volition,  and  in  the  retinue  of  phenomena  which  sur- 
round it,  that  liberty  more  energetically  appears,  but  it  is  not  thereby  ex- 
hausted. It  is  at  rare  and  sublime  moments  in  which  liberty  la  as  much 
greater  as  it  appears  less  to  the  eyes  of  a  superficial  observation.  I  have 
often  cited  the  example  of  d'Assas.  D'Assas  did  not  deliberate ;  and  fur  all 
that,  was  d'Assas  less  free,  did  he  not  act  with  entire  liberty?  Has  the  saint 
who,  after  a  long  and  painful  exercise  of  virtue,  has  come  to  practise,  as  it 
•  were  by  nature,  the  acts  of  self-renunciation  which  are  repugnant  to  human 
weakness ;  has  the  saint,  in  order  to  have  gone  out  from  the  contradictions 
and  the  anguish  of  this  form  of  liberty  which  we  called  volition,  fallen  be- 
low it  instead  of  being  elevated  above  it;  and  is  he  nothing  more  than  a 
blind  and  passive  instrument  of  grace,  as  Luther  and  Calvin  have  inappro- 
priately wished  to  call  it,  by  an  excessive  interpretation  of  the  Augustinian 
doctrine  ?  No,  freedom  still  remains ;  and  far  from  being  annihilated,  its 
liberty,  in  being  purified,  is  elevated  and  ennobled ;  from  the  human  form 
of  volition  it  has  passed  to  the  almost  divine  form  of  spontaneity.  Sponta- 
neity is  essentially  free,  although  it  may  be  accompanied  with  no  deliberation, 
and  although  often,  in  the  rapid  motion  of  its  inspired  action,  it  escapes  its 
own  observation,  and  leaves  scarcely  a  trace  in  the  depths  of  consciousness. 
Let  us  transfer  this  exact  psychology  to  theodicea,  and  we  may  recognize 
without  hypothesis,  that  spontaneity  is  also  especially  the  form  of  God's  lib- 
erty. Yes,  certainly,  God  is  free ;  for,  among  other  proofs,  it  would  be  ab- 
surd that  there  should  be  less  freedom  in  the  first  cause  than  in  one  of  its 
effects,  humanity ;  God  is  free,  but  not  with  that  liberty  which  is  related  to 
our  double  nature,  and  made  to  contend  against  passion  and  error,  and  pain- 
fully to  engender  virtue  and  our  imperfect  knowledge ;  he  is  free,  with  a 
liberty  that  is  related  to  his  own  divine  nature,  that  is  a  liberty  unlimited,  in- 
finite, recognizing  no  obstacle.  Between  justice  and  injustice,  between  good 
and  evil,  between  reason  and  its  contrary,  God  cannot  deliberate,  and,  con- 
sequently, cannot  will  after  our  manner.  Can  one  conceive,  in  fact,  that  he 
could  take  what  we  call  the  bad  part?  This  very  supposition  is  impious.  It 
is  necessary  to  admit  that  when  he  has  taken  the  contrary  part,  he  has  acted 
freely  without  doubt,  but  not  arbitrarily,  and  with  the  consciousness  of 
having  been  able  to  choose  the  other  part.  His  nature,  all-powerful,  all  just, 
all-wise,  is  developed  with  that  spontaneity  which  contains  entire  liberty, 
and  excludes  at  once  the  efforts  and  the  miseries  of  volition,  and  the  me- 
chanical operation  of  necessity.  Such  is  the  principle  and  the  true  charac- 
ter of  the  divine  action." 


330  LECTURE   SIXTEENTH. 

is  in  him  his  very  nature.  If  respect  of  rights  is  in  us  the  very 
essence  of  justice  and  the  sign  of  the  dignity  of  our  being,  it  is 
impossible  that  the  perfect  being  should  not  know  and  respect 
the  rights  of  the  lowest  beings,  since  it  is  he,  moreover,  who  has 
imparted  to  them  those  rights.  In  God  resides  a  sovereign  jus- 
tice, which  renders  to  each  one  his  due,  not  according  to  decep- 
tive appearances,  but  according  to  the  truth  of  things.  Finally, 
if  man,  that  limited  being,  has  the  power  of  going  out  of  himself, 
of  forgetting  his  person,  of  loving  another  than  himself,  of  de- 
voting himself  to  another's  happiness,  or,  what  is  better,  to  the 
perfecting  of  another,  should  not  the  perfect  being  have,  in  an 
infinite  degree,  this  disinterested  tenderness,  this  charity,  the  su- 
preme virtue  of  the  human  person  ?  Yes,  there  is  in  God  an 
infinite  tenderness  for  his  creatures :  he  at  first  manifested  it  in 
giving  us  the  being  that  he  might  have  withheld,  and  at  all  times 
it  appears  in  the  innumerable  signs  of  his  divine  providence. 
Plato  knew  this  love  of  God  well,  and  expressed  it  in  those  great 
words,  "  Let  us  say  that  the  cause  which  led  the  supreme  or- 
dainer  to  produce  and  compose  this  universe  is,  that  he  was  good  ; 
and  he  who  is  good  has  no  species  of  envy.  Exempt  from  envy, 
he  willed  that  all  things  should  be,  as  much  as  possible,  like 
himself."1  Christianity  went  farther:  according  to  the  divine 
doctrine,  God  so  loved  men  that  he  gave  them  his  only  Son. 
God  is  inexhaustible  in  his  charity,  as  he  is  inexhaustible  in  his 
essence.  It  is  impossible  to  give  more  to  the  creature ;  he  gives 
him  every  thing  that  he  can  receive  without  ceasing  to  be  a  crea- 
ture ;  he  gives  him  every  thing,  even  himself,  so  far  as  the  crea- 
ture is  in  him  and  he  in  the  creature.  At  the  same  time  nothing 
can  be  lost ;  for  being  absolute  being,  he  eternally  expands  and 
gives  himself  without  being  diminished.  Infinite  in  power,  infi- 
nite in  charity,  he  bestows  his  love  in  exhaustless  abundance  upon 
the  world,  to  teach  us  that  the  more  we  give  the  more  we  pos- 
sess. It  is  egoism,  whose  root  is  at  the  bottom  of  every  heart, 

1  Timcvus,  p.  119,  vol.  xii.  of  our  translation. 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.  331 

even  by  the  side  of  the  sincerest  charity,  that  inculcates  in  us 
the  error  that  we  lose  by  self-devotion :  it  is  egoism  that  makes 
us  call  devotion  a  sacrifice. 

If  God  is  wholly  just  and  wholly  good,  he  can  will  nothing 
but  what  is  good  and  just ;  and,  as  he  is  all-powerful,  every  thing 
that  he  wills  he  can  do,  and  consequently  does  do.  The  world 
is  the  w<frk  of  God ;  it  is  therefore  perfectly  made,  perfectly 
adapted  to  its  end. 

And  nevertheless,  there  is  in  the  world  a  disorder  that  seems 
to  accuse  the  justice  and  goodness  of  God. 

A  principle  that  is  attached  to  the  very  idea  of  the  good,  says 
to  us  that  every  moral  agent  deserves  a  reward  when  he  does 
good,  and  a  punishment  when  he  does  evil.  This  principle  is 
universal  and  necessary :  it  is  absolute.  If  this  principle  has 
not  its  application  in  this  world,  it  must  either  be  a  lie,  or  this 
world  is  ordered  ill. 

Now,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  good  is  not  always  followed  by  hap- 
piness, nor  evil  always  by  unhappiness. 

Let  us,  in  the  first  place,  remark  that  if  the  fact  exists,  it  is 
rare  enough,  and  seems  to  present  the  character  of  an  exception. 

Virtue  is  a  struggle  against  passion ;  this  struggle,  full  of 
dignity,  is  also  full  of  pain ;  but,  on  one  side,  crime  is  con- 
demned to  much  harder  pains ;  on  the  other,  those  of  virtue  are 
of  short  duration ;  they  are  a  necessary  and  almost  always  be- 
neficent trial. 

Virtue  has  its  pains,  but  the  greatest  happiness  is  still  with  it, 
as  the  greatest  unhappiness  is  with  crime ;  and  such  is  the  case 
in  small  and  great,  in  the  secret  of  the  soul,  and  on  the  theatre 
of  life,  in  the  obscurest  conditions  and  in  the  most  conspicuous 
situations. 

Good  and  bad  health  are,  after  all,  the  greatest  part  of  happi- 
ness or  unhappiness.  In  this  regard,  compare  temperance  and 
its  opposite,  order  and  disorder,  virtue  and  vice ;  I  mean  a  tem- 
perance truly  temperate,  and  not  an  atrabilarious  asceticism,  a 
rational  virtue,  and  not  a  fierce  virtue. 


332  LECTURE    SIXTEENTH. 

The  great  physician  Hufeland1  remarks  that  the  benevolent 
sentiments  are  favorable  to  health,  and  that  the  malevolent  sen- 
timents are  opposed  to  it.  Violent  and  sinful  passions  irritate, 
inflame,  and  carry  trouble  into  the  organization  as  well  as  the 
soul ;  the  benevolent  affections  preserve  the  measured  and  har- 
monious play  of  all  the  functions. 

Hufeland  again  remarks  that  the  greatest  longevities'  pertain  to 
wise  and  well-regulated  lives. 

Thus,  for  health,  strength,  and  life,  virtue  is  better  than  vice : 
it  is  already  much,  it  seems  to  me.  T 

I  surely  mean  to  speak  of  conscience  only  after  health ;  but, 
in  fine,  with  the  body,  our  most  constant  host  is  conscience. 
Peace  or  trouble  of  conscience  decides  internal  happiness  or  un- 
happiness.  At  this  point  of  view,  compare  again  order  and  dis- 
order, virtue  and  vice. 

And  without  us,  in  society,  to  whom  come  esteem  and  con- 
tempt, consideration  and  infamy  ?  Certainly  opinion  has  its  mis- 
takes, but  they  are  not  long.  In  general,  if  charlatans,  in- 
triguers, impostors  of  every  kind,  for  some  time  surreptitiously 
get  suffrages,  it  must  be  that  a  sustained  honesty  is  the  surest 
and  the  almost  infallible  means  of  reaching  a  good  renown. 

I  regret  that  upon  this  point  time  does  not  allow  of  any  devel- 
opment. It  would  have  afforded  me  delight,  after  having  dis- 
tinguished virtue  from  happiness,  to  show  them  to  you  almost 
always  united  by  the  admirable  law  of  merit  and  demerit.  I 
should  have  been  pleased  to  show  you  this  beneficent  law  al- 
ready governing  human  destiny,  and  called  to  preside  over  it 
more  exactly  from  day  to  day  by  the  ever-increasing  progress  of 
lights  in  governments  and  peoples,  by  the  perfecting  of  civil  and 
judicial  institutions.  It  would  have  been  my  wish  to  make  pass 
into  your  minds  and  hearts  the  consoling  conviction  that,  after 
all,  justice  is  already  in  this  world,  and  that  the  surest  road  to 
happiness  is  still  that  of  virtue. 

1  De  VArt  de  pr along er  sa  Vie,  etc. 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.   333 

This  was  the  opinion  of  Socrates  and  Plato  ;  and  it  is  also  that 
of  Franklin,  and  I  gather  it  from  my  personal  experience  and  an 
attentive  examination  of  human  life.  But  I  admit  that  there  are 
exceptions  ;  and  were  there  but  one  exception,  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  explain  it. 

Suppose  a  man,  young,  beautiful,  rich,  amiable,  and  loved, 
who,  placed  between  the  scaffold  and  the  betrayal  of  a  sacred 
cause,  voluntarily  mounts  the  scaffold  at  twenty  years  of  age. 
What  do  you  make  of  this  noble  victim  ?  The  law  of  merit  and 
demerit  seems  here  suspended.  Do  you  dare  blame  virtue,  or 
how  in  this  world  do  you  accord  to  it  the  recompense  that  it  has 
not  sought,  but  is  its  due  ? 

By  careful  search  you  will  find  more  than  one  case  analogous 
to  that. 

The  laws  of  this  world  are  general ;  they  turn  aside  to  suit  no 
one  :  they  pursue  their  course  without  regard  to  the  merit  or  de- 
merit of  any.  If  a  man  is  born  with  a  bad  temperament,  it  is  in 
virtue  of  certain  obscure  but  undeviating  physical  laws,  to  which 
he  is  subject,  like  the  animal  and  the  plant,  and  he  suffers  during 
his  whole  life,  although  personally  innocent.  He  is  brought  up 
in  the  midst  of  flames,  epidemics,  calamities  that  strike  at  hazard 
the  good  as  well  as  the  bad. 

Human  justice  condemns  many  that  are  innocent,  it  is  true, 
but  it  absolves,  in  fault  of  proof,  more  than  one  who  is  culpable. 
Besides,  it  knows  only  certain  derelictions.  What  faults,  what 
basenesses  occur  in  the  dark,  which  do  not  receive  merited  chas- 
tisement! In  like  manner,  what  obscure  devotions  of  which 
God  is  the  sole  witness  and  judge!  Without  doubt  nothing 
escapes  the  eye  of  conscience,  and  the  culpable  soul  cannot 
escape  remorse.  But  remorse  is  not  always  in  exact  relation 
with  the  fault  committed ;  its  vivacity  may  depend  on  a  nature 
more  or  less  delicate,  on  education  and  habit.  In  a  word,  if  it  is 
in  general  very  true  that  the  law  of  merit  and  demerit  is  ful- 
filled in  this  world,  it  is  not  fulfilled  with  mathematical  rigor. 

What  must  we  conclude  from  this  ?     That  the  world  is  ill- 


334:  LECTURE  SIXTEENTH. 

made  ?  No.  That  cannot  be,  and  is  not.  That  cannot  be,  foi 
incontestably  the  world  has  a  just  and  good  author ;  that  is  not, 
for,  in  fact,  we  see  order  reigning  in  the  world  ;  and  it  would 
be  absurd  to  misconceive  the  manifest  order  that  almost  every- 
where shines  forth  on  account  of  a  few  phenomena  that  we  can- 
not refer  to  order.  The  universe  endures,  therefore  it  is  well 
made.  The  pessimism  of  Voltaire  is  still  more  opposed  to  the 
aggregate  of  facts  than  an  absolute  optimism.  Between  these 
two  systematic  extremes  which  facts  deny,  the  human  race  places 
the  hope  of  another  life.  It  has  found  it  very  irrational  to  reject 
a  necessary  law  on  account  of  some  infractions ;  it  has,  therefore, 
maintained  the  law  ;  and  from  infractions  it  has  only  concluded 
that  they  ought  to  be  referred  to  the  law,  that  there  will  be  a 
reparation.  Either  this  conclusion  must  be  admitted,  or  the 
two  great  principles  previously  admitted,  that  God  is  just,  and 
that  the  law  of  merit  and  demerit  is  an  absolute  law,  must  be 
rejected. 

Now,  to  reject  these  two  principles  is  to  totally  overthrow  all 
human  belief. 

To  maintain  them,  is  implicitly  to  admit  that  actual  life  must 
be  elsewhere  terminated  or  continued. 

But  is  this  continuation  of  the  person  possible  ?  After  the  dis- 
solution of  the  body,  can  any  thing  of  us  remain  ? 

In  truth,  the  moral  person,  which  acts  well  or  ill,  which  awaits 
the  reward  or  punishment  of  its  good  or  bad  actions,  is  united  to 
a  body, — it  lives  with  the  body,  makes  use  of  it,  and,  in  a  certain 
measure,  depends  on  it,  but  is  not  it.1  The  body  is  composed  of 


1  On  the  spirituality  of  the  soul,  see  all  our  writings.  We  will  limit  our- 
selves to  two  citations.  2d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  25,  p.  359 :  "It  is  impos- 
sible to  know  any  phenomenon  of  consciousness,  the  phenomena  of  sensa- 
tion, or  volition,  or  of  intelligence,  without  instantly  referring  them  to  a  sub- 
ject one  and  identical,  which  is  the  me;  so  we  cannot  know  the  external 
phenomena  of  resistance,  of  solidity,  of  impenetrability,  of  figure,  of  color, 
of  smell,  of  taste,  etc.,  without  judging  that  these  are  not  phenomena  in  ap- 
pearance, but  phenomena  which  belong  to  something  real,  which  is  solid, 
impenetrable,  figured,  colored,  odorous,  savory,  etc.  On  the  other  hand,  if 


GOD  THE   PRINCIPLE   OF  THE   IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.     335 

parts,  may  decrease  or  increase ;  is  divisible,  essentially  divisible, 
and  even  infinitely  divisible.  But  that  something  that  has  con- 
sciousness of  itself,  that  says,  /,  me,  that  feels  itself  to  be  free  and 
responsible,  does  it  not  also  feel  that  there  is  in  it  no  division, 


you  did  not  know  any  of  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  you  would  never 
have  the  least  idea  of  the  subject  of  these  phenomena ;  if  you  did  not  know 
any  of  the  external  phenomena  of  resistance,  of  solidity,  of  impenetrability, 
of  figure,  of  color,  etc.,  you  would  not  have  any  idea  of  the  subject  of  these 
phenomena :  therefore  the  characters,  whether  of  the  phenomena  of  con- 
sciousness, or  of  exterior  phenomena,  are  for  you  the  only  signs  of  the  nature 
of  the  subjects  of  these  phenomena.  In  examining  the  phenomena  which 
fall  under  the  senses,  we  find  between  them  grave  differences  upon  which  it 
is  useless  here  to  insist,  and  which  establish  the  distinction  of  primary 
qualities  and  of  secondary  qualities.  In  the  first  rank  among  the  primary 
qualities  is  solidity,  which  is  given  to  you  in  the  sensation  of  resistance,  and 
inevitably  accompanied  by  form,  etc.  On  the  contrary,  when  you  examine 
the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  you  do  not  therein  find  this  character  of 
resistance,  of  solidity,  of  form,  etc. ;  you  do  not  find  that  the  phenomena  of 
your  consciousness  have  a  figure,  solidity,  itopenetrability,  resistance ;  with- 
out speaking  of  secondary  qualities  which  are  equally  foreign  to  them,  color, 
savor,  sound,  smell,  etc.  Now,  as  the  subject  is  for  us  only  the  collection  of 
the  phenomena  which  reveal  it  to  us,  together  with  its  own  existence  in  so 
far  as  the  subject  of  the  inherence  of  these  phenomena,  it  follows  that,  under 
phenomena  marked  with  dissimilar  characters  and  entirely  foreign  to  each 
other,  the  human  mind  conceives  dissimilar  and  foreign  subjects.  Thus  as 
solidity  and  figure  have  nothing  in  common  with  sensation,  will,  and 
thought,  as  every  solid  is  extended  for  us,  and  as  we  place  it  necessarily  in 
space,  while  our  thoughts,  our  volitions,  our  sensations,  are  for  us  unex- 
tended,  and  while  we  cannot  conceive  them  and  place  them  in  space,  but 
only  in  time,  the  human  mind  concludes  with  perfect  strictness  that  the 
subject  of  the  exterior  phenomena  has  the  character  of  the  latter,  and  that 
the  subject  of  the  phenomena  of  consciousness  has  the  character  of  the  for- 
mer ;  that  the  one  is  solid  and  extended,  and  that  the  other  is  neither  solid 
nor  extended.  Finally,  as  that  which  is  solid  and  extended  is  divisible,  and 
as  that  which  is  neither  solid  nor  extended  is  indivisible,  hence  divisibility 
is  attributed  to  the  solid  and  extended  subject,  and  indivisibility  attributed 
to  the  subject  which  is  neither  extended  nor  solid.  Who  of  us,  in  fact,  does 
not  believe  himself  an  indivisible  being,  one  and  identical,  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  to-morrow  ?  Well,  the  word  body,  the  word  matter,  signi- 
fies nothing  else  than  the  subject  of  external  phenomena,  the  most  eminent 
of  which  are  form,  impenetrability,  solidity,  extension,  divisibility.  The 
word  mind,  the  word  soul,  signifies  nothing  else  than  the  subject  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  consciousness,  thought,  will,  sensation,  phenomena  simple,  un- 
extended,  not  solid,  etc.  Behold  the  whole  idea  of  spirit,  and  the  whole 
idea  of  matter !  See,  therefore,  all  tl  at  must  be  done  in  order  to  bring  back 


336  LECTURE  SIXTEENTH. 

even  no  possible  division,  that  it  is  a  being  one  and  simple?  Is 
the  me  more  or  less  me  ?  Is  there  a  half  of  me,  a  quarter  of  me  ? 
I  cannot  divide  my  person.  It  remains  identical  to  itself  under 
the  diversity  of  the  phenomena  that  manifest  it.  This  identity, 
this  indivisibility  of  the  person,  is  its  spirituality.  Spirituality  is, 


matter  to  spirit,  and  spirit  to  matter :  it  is  necessary  to  pretend  that  sensa- 
tion, volition,  thought,  are  reducible  in  the  last  analysis  to  solidity,  exten- 
sion, figure,  divisibility,  etc.,  or  that  solidity,  extension,  figure,  etc.,  are  re- 
ducible to  thought,  volition,  sensation."  1st  Series,  vol.  iii.,  lecture  1, 
Locke.  "  Locke  pretends  that  we  cannot  be  certain  by  the  contemplation  of 
our  own  ideas,  that  matter  cannot  think  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  in  the  con- 
templation itself  of  our  ideas  that  we  clearly  perceive  that  matter  and  thought 
are  incompatible.  What  is  thinking?  Is  it  not  uniting  a  certain  number  of 
ideas  under  a  certain  unity  ?  The  simplest  judgment  supposes  several  terms 
united  in  a  subject,  one  and  identical,  which  is  me.  This  identical  me  is  im- 
plied in  every  real  act  of  knowledge.  It  has  been  demonstrated  to  satiety 
that  comparison  exacts  an  indivisible  centre  that  comprises  the  different 
terms  of  the  comparison.  Do  you  take  memory  ?  There  is  no  memory  pos- 
sible without  the  continuation  of  the  same  subject  that  refers  to  self  the 
different  modifications  by  which  it  has  been  successively  affected.  Finally, 
consciousness,  that  indispensable  condition  of  intelligence, — is  it  not  the 
sentiment  of  a  single  being?  This  is  the  reason  why  each  man  cannot  think 
without  saying  me,  without  affirming  that  he  is  himself  the  identical  and  one 
subject  of  his  thoughts.  I  am  me,  and  always  me,  as  you  are  always  yourself 
in  the  most  different  acts  of  your  life.  You  are  not  more  yourself  to-day 
th'in  you  were  yesterday,  and  you  are  not  less  yourself  to-day  than  you  were 
yesterday.  This  identity  and  this  indivisible  unity  of  the  me  inseparable 
from  the  least  thought,  is  what  is  called  ita  spirituality,  in  opposition  to  the 
evident  and  necessary  characters  of  matter.  By  what,  in  fact,  do  you  know 
matter?  It  is  especially  by  form,  by  extension,  by  something  solid  that 
stops  you,  that  resists  you  in  different  points  of  space.  But  is  not  a  solid 
essentially  divisible  ?  Take  the  most  subtile  fluids, — can  you  help  conceiv- 
ing them  as  more  or  less  susceptible  of  division  ?  All  thought  has  its 
different  elements  like  matter,  but  in  addition  it  has  its  unity  in  the  think- 
ing subject,  and  the  subject  being  taken  away,  which  is  one,  the  total  phe- 
nomenon no  longer  exists.  Far  from  that,  the  unknown  subject  to  which 
we  attach  material  phenomena  is  divisible,  and  divisible  ad  infinitum;  it 
cannot  cease  to  be  divisible  without  ceasing  to  exist.  Such  are  the  ideas 
that  we  have,  on  the  one  side,  of  mind,  on  the  other,  of  matter.  Thought 
supposes  a  subject  essentially  one ;  matter  is  infinitely  divisible.  What  is 
the  need  of  going  farther?  If  any  conclusion  is  legitimate,  it  is  that  which 
distinguishes  thought  from  matter.  God  can  indeed  make  them  exist  to- 
gether, and  their  co-existence  is  a  certain  fact,  but  he  cannot  confound  them. 
God  can  unite  thought  and  matter,  he  cannot  make  matter  thought,  nor 
what  is  extended  simple." 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.   337 

therefore,  the  very  essence  of  the  person.  Belief  in  the  spirit- 
uality of  the  soul  is  involved  in  the  belief  of  this  identity  of  the 
me,  which  no  rational  being  has  ever  called  in  question.  Accord- 
ingly, there  is  not  the  least  hypothesis  for  affirming  that  the  soul 
'  does  not  essentially  differ  from  the  body.  Add  that  when  we 
say  the  soul,  we  mean  to  say,  and  do  say  the  person,  which  is 
not  separated  from  the  consciousness  of  the  attributes  that  con- 
stitute it,  thought  and  will.  The  being  without  consciousness  is 
not  a  person.  It  is  the  person  that  is  identical,  one,  simple.  Its 
attributes,  in  developing  it,  do  not  divide  it.  Indivisible,  it  is  in- 
dissoluble, and  may  be  immortal.  If,  then,  divine  justice,  in 
order  to  be  exercised  in  regard  to  us,  demands  an  immortal  soul, 
it  does  not  demand  an  impossible  thing.  The  spirituality  of  the 
soul  is  the  necessary  foundation  of  immortality.  The  law  of 
merit  and  demerit  is  the  direct  demonstration  of  this.  The  first 
proof  is  called  the  metaphysical  proof,  the  second,  the  moral 
proof,  which  is  the  most  celebrated,  most  popular,  at  once  the 
most  convincing  and  the  most  persuasive. 

What  powerful  motives  are  added  to  these  two  proofs  to  for- 
tify them  in  the  heart !  The  following,  for  example,  is  a  pre- 
sumption of  great  value  for  any  one  that  believes  in  the  virtue  of 
sentiment  and  instinct. 

Every  thing  has  its  end.  This  principle  is  as  absolute  as  that 
which  refers  every  event,  to  a  cause.1  Man  has,  therefore,  an  end. 
This  end  is  revealed  in  all  his  thoughts,  in  all  his  ways,  in  all  his 
sentiments,  in  all  his  life.  Whatever  he  does,  whatever  he  feels, 
whatever  he  thinks,  he  thinks  upon  the  infinite,  loves  the  infinite, 
tends  to  the  infinite.2  This  need  of  the  infinite  is  the  main- 
spring of  scientific  curiosity,  the  principle  of  all  discoveries.  Love 
also  stops  and  rests  only  there.  On  the  route  it  may  experience 
lively  joys ;  but  a  secret  bitterness  that  is  mingled  with  them 
soon  makes  it  feel  their  insufficiency  and  emptiness.  Often,  while 
ignorant  of  its  true  object,  it  asks  whence  comes  that  fatal  disen- 

1  See  1st  part,  lecture  1.  "  See  lecture  5,  Mysticism. 

15 


338  LECTURE   SIXTEENTH. 

chantment  by  which  all  its  successes,  all  its  pleasures  are  succes- 
sively extinguished.  If  it  knew  how  to  read  itself,  it  would  re- 
cognize that  if  nothing  here  below  satisfies  it,  it  is  because  its  ob- 
ject is  more  elevated,  because  the  true  bourne  after  which  it  as- 
pires is  infinite  perfection.  Finally,  like  thought  and  love,  human 
activity  is  without  limits.  Who  can  say  where  it  shall  stop  ? 
Behold  this  earth  almost  known.  Soon  another  world  will  be 
necessary  for  us.  Man  is  journeying  towards  the  infinite,  which 
is  always  receding  before  him,  which  he  always  pursues.  He 
conceives  it,  he  feels  it,  he  bears  it,  thus  to  speak,  in  himself, — 
how  should  his  end  be  elsewhere  ?  Hence  that  unconquerable 
instinct  of  immortality,  that  universal  hope  of  another  life  to 
which  all  worships,  all  poesies,  all  traditions  bear  witness.  We 
tend  to  the  infinite  with  all  our  powers ;  .death  comes  to  interrupt 
the  destiny  that  seeks  its  goal,  and  overtakes  it  unfinished.  It 
is,  therefore,  likely  that  thete  is  something  after  death,  since  at 
death  nothing  in  us  is  terminated.  Look  at  the  flower  that  to- 
morrow will  not  be.  To-day,  at  least,  it  is  entirely  developed : 
we  can  conceive  nothing  more  beautiful  of  its  kind ;  it  has  at- 
tained its  perfection.  My  perfection,  my  moral  perfection,  that  of 
which  I  have  the  clearest  idea  and  the  most  invincible  need,  for 
which  I  feel  that  I  am  born, — in  vain  I  call  for  it,  in  vain  I  labor 
for  it ;  it  escapes  me,  and  leaves  me  only  hope.  Shall  this  hope 
be  deceived?  All  beings  attain  their  end;  should  man  alone 
not  attain  his  ?  Should  the  greatest  ,of  creatures  be  the  most  ill- 
treated  ?  But  a  being  that  should  remain  incomplete  and  un- 
finished, that  should  not  attain  the  end  which  all  his  instincts 
proclaim  for  him,  would  be  a  monster  in  the  eternal  order, — a 
problem  mu  ,h  more  difficult  to  solve  than  the  difficulties  that 
have  been  raised  against  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  In  our 
opinion,  this  tendency  of  all  the  desires  and  all  the  powers  of  the 
soul  towards  the  infinite,  elucidated  by  the  principle  of  final 
causes,  is  a  serious  and  important  confirmation  of  the  moral  proof 
and  the  metaphysical  proof  of  another  life.  ' 

When  we  have  collected  all  the  arguments  that  authorize  be- 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.   339 

lief  in  another  life,  and  when  we  have  thus  arrived  at  a  satisfying 
demonstration,  there  remains  an  obstacle  to  be  overcome.  Im- 
agination cannot  contemplate  without  fright  that  unknown  which 
is  called  death.  The  greatest  philosopher  in  the  world,  says  Pas- 
cal, on  a  plank  wider  than  it  is  necessary  in  order  to  go  without 
danger  from  one  side  of  an  abyss  to  the  other,  cannot  think  with- 
out trembling  on  the  abyss  that  is  beneath  him,  It  is  not  reason, 
it  is  imagination  that  frightens  him  ;  it  is  also  imagination  that 
in  great  part  causes  that  remnant  of  doubt,  that  trouble,  that 
secret  anxiety  which  the  firmest  faith  cannot  always  succeed  in 
overcoming  in  the  presence  of  death.  The  religious  man  expe- 
riences this  terror,  but  he  knows  whence  it  comes,  and  he  sur- 
mounts it  by  attaching  himself  to  the  solid  hopes  furnished  him 
by  reason  and  the  heart.  Imagination  is  a  child  that  must  be 
educated,  by  putting  it  under  the  discipline  and  government  of 
better  faculties ;  it  must  be  accustomed  to  go  to  intelligence  for 
aid  instead  of  troubling  intelligence  with  its  phantoms.  Let  us 
acknowledge  that  there  is  a  terrible  step  to  be  taken  when  we 
meet  death.  Nature  trembles  when  face  to  face  with  the  un- 
known eternity.  It  is  wise  to  present  ourselves  there  with  all 
our  forces  united, — reason  and  the  heart  lending  each  other 
mutual  support,  the  imagination  being  subdued  or  charmed. 
Let  us  continually  repeat  that,  in  death  as  in  life,  the  sou!  is  sure 
to  find  God,  and  that  with  God  all  is  just,  all  is  good.1 


1  4th  Series,  vol.  iii.,  Santa-Rosa :  "  After  all,  the  existence  of  a  divine 
Providence  is,  to  my  eyes,  a  truth  clearer  than  all  lights,  more  certain  than 
all  mathematics.  Yes,  there  is  a  God,  a  God  who  is  a  true  intelligence,  who 
consequently  has  a  consciousness  of  himself,  who  has  made  and  ordered 
every  thing  with  weight  and  measure,  whose  works  are  excellent,  whose 
ends  are  adorable,  even  when  they  are  veiled  from  our  feeble  eyes.  This 
world  has  a  perfect  author,  perfectly  wise  and  good.  Man  is  not  an  orphan ; 
he  has  a  father  in  heaven.  What  will  this  father  do  with  his  child  when  he 
returns  to  him  ?  Nothing  but  what  is  good.  Whatever  happens,  all  will  be 
well.  Every  thing  that  he  has  done  has  been  done  well ;  every  thing  that 
he  shall  do,  I  accept  beforehand,  and  bless.  Yes,  such  is  my  unalterable 
faith,  and  this  faith  is  my  support,  my  refuge,  my  consolation,  my  solace  in 
this  fearful  moment." 


340  LECTURE   SIXTEENTH. 

We  now  know  what  God  truly  is.  We  have  already  seen  two 
of  his  adorable  attributes, — truth  and  beauty.  The  most  august 
attribute  is  revealed  to  us, — holiness.  God  is  the  holy  of  holies, 
as  the  author  of  the  moral  law  and  the  good,  as  the  principle  of 
liberty,  justice,  and  charity,  as  the  dispenser  of  penalty  and  re- 
ward. Such  a  God  is  not  an  abstract  God,  but  an  intelligent  and 
free  person,  who  has  made  us  in  his  own  image,  from  whom  we 
hold  the  law  itself  that  presides  over  our  destiny,  whose  judg- 
ments we  await.  It  is  his  love  that  inspires  us  in  our  acts  of 
charity;  it  is  his  justice  that  governs  our  justice,  that  of  our  so- 
cieties and  our  laws.  If  we  do  not  continually  remind  ourselves 
that  he  is  infinite,  we  degrade  his  nature ;  but  he  would  be  for 
us  as  if  he  were  not,  if  his  infinite  essence  had  no  forms  that  per- 
tain to  us,  the  proper  forms  of  our  reason  and  our  soul. 
.  By  thinking  upon  such  a  being,  man  feels  a  sentiment  that  is 
par  excellence  the  religious  sentiment.  All  the  beings  with  whom 
we  are  in  relation  awaken  in  us  different  sentiments,  according  to 
the  qualities  that  we  perceive  in  them  ;  and  should  he  who  pos- 
sesses all  perfections  excite  in  us  no  particular  sentiment  ?  When 
we  think  upon  the  infinite  essence  of  God,  when  we  are  pene- 
trated with  his  omnipotence,  when  we  are  reminded  that  the 
moral  law  expresses  his  will,  that  he  attaches  to  the  fulfilment 
and  the  violation  of  this  law  recompenses  and  penalties  which  he 
dispenses  with  an  inflexible  justice,  we  cannot  guard  ourselves 
against  an  emotion  of  respect  and  fear  at  the  idea  of  such  a  gran- 
deur. Then,  if  we  come  to  consider  that  this  all-powerful  being 
has  indeed  wished  to  create  us,  us  of  whom  he  has  no  need,  that 
in  creating  us  he  has  loaded  us  with  benefits,  that  he  has  given 
us  this  admirable  universe  for  enjoying  its  ever-new  beauties,  so- 
ciety for  ennobling  our  life  in  that  of  our  fellow-men,  reason  for 
thinking,  the  heart  for  loving,  liberty  for  acting ;  without  disap- 
pearing, respect  and  fear  are  tinged  with  a  sweeter  sentiment, 
that  of  love.  Love,  when  it  is  applied  to  feeble  and  limited 
beings,  inspires  us  with  a  desire  to  do  good  to  them ;  but  in  itself 
it  proposes  to  itself  no  advantage  from  the  person  loved ;  we  love 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.   341 

a  beautiful  or  good  object,  because  it  is  beautiful  or  good,  with- 
out at  first  regarding  whether  this  love  may  be  useful  to  its 
object  and  ourselves.  For  a  still  stronger  reason,  love,  when  it 
ascends  to  God,  is  a  pure  homage  rendered  to  his  perfections ; 
it  is  the  natural  overflow  of  the  soul  towards  a  being  infinitely 
lovable. 

Respect  and  love  compose  adoration.  True  adoration  does  not 
exist  without  possessing  both  of  these  sentiments.  If  you  consider 
only  the  all-powerful  God,  master  of  heaven  and  earth,  author 
and  avenger  of  justice,  you  crush  man  beneath  the  weight  of  the 
grandeur  of  God  and  his  own  feebleness,  you  condemn  him  to  a 
continual  trembling  in  the  uncertainty  of  God's  judgments,  you 
make  him  hate  the  world,  life,  and  himself,  for  every  thing  is  full 
of  misery.  Towards  this  extreme,  Port-Royal  inclines.  Read  the 
Pensees  de  Pascal}  In  his  great  humility,  Pascal  forgets  two 
things, — the  dignity  of  man  and  the  love  of  God.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  you  see  only  the  good  God  and  the  indulgent  father,  you 
incline  to  a  chimerical  mysticism.  By  substituting  love  for  fear, 
little  by  little  with  fear,  we  run  the  risk  of  losing  respect.  God 
is  no  more  a  master,  he  is  no  more  even  a  father;  for  the  idea  of 
a  father  still  to  a  certain  point  involves  that  of  a  respectful  fear ; 
he  is  no  more  any  thing  but  a  friend,  sometimes  even  a  lover. 
True  adoration  does  not  separate  love  and  respect ;  it  is  respect 
animated  by  love. 

Adoration  is  a  universal  sentiment.  It  differs  in  degrees  ac- 
cording to  different  natures ;  it  takes  the  most  different  forms ;  it 
is  often  even  ignorant  of  itself;  sometimes  it  is  revealed  by  an 
exclamation  springing  from  the  heart,  in  the  midst  of  the  great 
scenes  of  nature  and  life,  sometimes  it  silently  rises  in  the  mute 
and  penetrated  soul ;  it  may  err  in  its  expressions,  even  in  its 
object ;  but  at  bottom  it  is  always  the  same.  It  is  a  spontaneous, 
irresistible  emotion  of  the  soul ;  and  when  reason  is  applied  to  it, 
it  is  declared  just  and  legitimate.  What,  in  fact,  is  more  just 

1  See  our  discussion  on  the  Pen*t.es  dt  Pascal,  vol.  i.  of  the  4th  Series. 

13 


342  LECTURE  SIXTEENTH. 

than  to  fear  the  judgments  of  him  who  is  holiness  itself,  who 
knows  our  actions  and  our  intentions,  and  will  judge  them  ac- 
cording to  the  highest  justice  ?  What,  too,  is  more  just  than  to 
love  perfect  goodness  and  the  source  of  all  love  ?  Adoration  is 
at  first  a  natural  sentiment ;  reason  makes  it  a  duty. 

Adoration  confined  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  soul  is  what 
is  called  internal  worship — the  necessary  principle  of  all  public 
worships. 

Public  worship  is  no  more  an,  arbitrary  institution  than  society 
and  government,  language  and  arts.  All  these  things  have  their 
roots  in  human  nature.  Adoration  abandoned  to  itself,  would 
easily  degenerate  into  dreams  and  ecstasy,  or  would  be  dissipated 
in  the  rush  of  affairs  and  the  necessities  of  every  day.  The  more 
energetic  it  is,  the  more  it  tends  to  express  itself  outwardly  in 
acts  that  realize  it,  to  take  a  sensible,  precise,  and  regular  form, 
which,  by  a  proper  reaction  on  the  sentiment  that  produced  it, 
awakens  it  when  it  slumbers,  sustains  it  when  it  languishes,  and 
also  protects  it  against  extravagances  of  every  kind  to  which  it 
might  give  birth  in  so  many  feeble  or  unbridled  imaginations. 
Philosophy,  then,  lays  the  natural  foundation  of  public  worship 
in  the  internal  worship  of  adoration.  Having  arrived  at  that 
point,  it  stops,  equally  careful  not  to  betray  its  rights  and  not  to 
go  beyond  them,  to  run  over,  in  its  whole  extent  and  to  its  farthest 
limit,  the  domain  of  natural  reason,  as  well  as  not  to  usurp  a  for- 
eign domain. 

But  philosophy  does  not  think  of  trespassing  on  the  ground  of 
theology ;  it  wishes  to  remain  faithful  to  itself,  and  also  to  follow 
its  true  mission,  which  is  to  love  and  favor  every  thing  that  tends 
to  elevate  man,  since  it  heartily  applauds  the  awakening  of  reli- 
gious and  Christian  sentiment  in  all  noble  souls,  after  the  ravages 
that  have  been  made  on  every  hand,  for  more  than  a  century,  by 
a  false  and  sad  philosophy.  What,  in  fact,  would  not  have  been 
the  joy  of  a  Socrates  and  a  Plato  if  they  had  found  the  human 
race  in  the  arms  of  Christianity !  How  happy  would  Plato — 
who  was  so  evidently  embarrassed  between  his  beautiful  doctrines 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.   343 

and  the  religion  of  his  times,  who  managed  so  carefully  with  that 
religion  even  when  he  avoided  it,  who  was  forced  to  take  from  it 
the  best  possible  part,  in  order  to  aid  a  favorable  interpretation  of 
his  doctrine — have  been,  if  he  had  had  to  do  with  a  religion  which 
presents  to  man,  as  at  once  its  author  and  its  model,  the  sublime 
and  mild  Crucified,  of  whom  he  had  an  extraordinary  presenti- 
ment, whom  he  almost  described  in  the  person  of  a  just  man 
dying  on  the  cross  ;l  a  religion  which  came  to  announce,  or  at 
least  to  consecrate  and  expand  the  idea  of  the  unity  of  God  and 
that  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race ;  which  proclaims  the  equality 
of  all  souls  before  the  divine  law,  which  thereby  has  prepared  and 
maintains  civil  equality ;  which  prescribes  charity  still  more  than 
justice,  which  teaches  man  that  he  does  not  live  by  bread  alone, 
that  he  is  not  wholly  contained  in  his  senses  and  his  body,  that 
he  has  a  soul,  a  free  soul,  whose  value  is  infinite,  above  the  value 
of  all  worlds,  that  life  is  a  trial,  that  its  true  object  is  not  pleasure, 
fortune,  rank,  none  of  those  things  that  do  not  pertain  to  our  real 
destiny,  and  are  often  more  dangerous  than  useful,  but  is  that 
alone  which  is  always  in  our  power,  in  all  situations  and  all  con- 
ditions, from  end  to  end  of  the  earth,  to  wit,  the  improvement  of 
the  soul  by  itself,  in  the  holy  hope  of  becoming  from  day  to  day 
less  unworthy  of  the  regard  of  the  Father  of  men,  of  the  examples 
given  by  him,  and  of  his  promises.  If  the  greatest  moralist  that 
ever  lived  could  have  seen  these  admirable  teachings,  which  in 
germ  were  already  at  the  foundation  of  his  spirit,  of  which  more 
than  one  trait  can  be  found  in  his  works,  if  he  had  seen  them 
consecrated,  maintained,  continually  recalled  to  the  heart  and 
imagination  of  man  by  sublime  and  touching  institutions,  what 
would  have  been  his  tender  and  grateful  sympathy  for  such  a  re- 
ligion !  If  he  had  come  in  our  own  times,  in  that  age  given  up 
to  revolutions,  in  which  the  best  souls  were  early  infected  by  the 
breath  of  skepticism,  in  default  of  the  faith  of  an  Augustine,  of  an 
Anselm,  of  a  Thomas,  of  a  Bossuet,  he  would  have  had,  we  doubt 

1  See  the  end  of  the  first  book  of  the  Republic,  vol.  ix.  of  our  translation. 


344  LECTURE    SIXTEENTH. 

% 

not,  the  sentiments  at  least  of  a  Montesquieu,1  of  a  Turgot,8  of  a 
Franklin,8  and  very  far  from  putting  the  Christian  religion  and  a 
good  philosophy  at  war  with  each  other,  he  would  have  been 
forced  to  unite  them,  to  elucidate  and  fortify  them  by  each  other. 
That  great  mind  and  that  great  heart,  which  dictated  to  him  the 
Phedon,  the  Gorgias,  the  Republic,  would  also  have  taught  him 
that  such  books  are  made  for  a  few  sages,  that  there  is  needed 
for  the  human  race  a  philosophy  at  once  similar  and  different, 
that  this  philosophy  is  a  religion,  and  that  this  desirable  and  ne- 
cessary religion  is  the  Gospel.  We  do^  not  hesitate  to  say  that, 
without  religion,  philosophy,  reduced  to  what  it  can  laboriously 
draw  from  perfected  natural  reason,  addresses  itself  to  a  very 
small  number,  and  runs  the  risk  of  remaining  without  much  influ- 
ence on  manners  and  life;  and  that,  without  philosophy,  the 
purest  religion  is  no  security  against  many  superstitions,  which 
little  by  little  bring  all  the  rest,  and  for  that  reason  it  may  see  the 
best  minds  escaping  its  influence,  as  was  the  case  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  alliance  between  true  religion  and  true  philosophy 
is,  then,  at  once  natural  and  necessary ;  natural  by  the  common 
basis  of  the  truths  which  they  acknowledge ;  necessary  for  the 
better  service  of  humanity.  Philosophy  and  religion  differ  only 
in  the  forms  that  distinguish,  without  separating  them.  Another 
auditory,  other  forms,  and  another  language.  When  St.  Augus- 
tine speaks  to  all  the  faithful  in  the  church  of  Hippone,  do  not 
seek  in  him  the  subtile  and  profound  metaphysician  who  com- 
bated the  Academicians  with  their  own  arms,  who  supports 
himself  on  the  Platonic  theory  of  ideas,  in  order  to  explain  the 
creation.  Bossuet,  in  the  treatise  De  la  Connaissance  de  Dieu  et 


1  Esprit  des  Lois,  passim. 

a  Works  of  Turgot,  vol.  ii.,  Discours  en  Sorbonne  sur  les  Avantages  que  Vetar 
blissement  du  Christianism  a  procures  au  Genre  Humain,  etc. 

3  In  the  Correspondence,  the  letter  to  Dr.  Stiles,  March  9,  1790,  written  by 
Franklin  a  few  months  before  his  death  :  "  I  am  convinced  that  the  moral 
and  religious  system  which  Jesus  Christ  has  transmitted  to  us  is  the  best 
that  the  world  has  seen  or  can  see." — We  here  re-translate,  not  having  the 
works  of  Franklin  immediately  at  hand. 


GOD  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  THE  GOOD.  345 

Soi-meme,  is  no  longer,  and  at  the  same  time  he  is  always,  the 
author  of  the  Sermons,  of  the  Elevations,  and  the  incomparable 
Catechisme  de  Meaux.  To  separate  religion  and  philosophy  has 
always  been,  on  one  side  or  the  other,  the  pretension  of  small, 
exclusive,  and  fanatical  minds ;  the  duty,  more  imperative  now 
than  ever,  of  whomsoever  has  for  either  a  serious  and  enlightened 
love,  is  to  bring  together  and  unite,  instead  of  dividing  and  wast- 
ing the  powers  of  the  mind  and  the  soul,  in  the  interest  of  the 
common  cause  and  the  great  object  which  the  Christian  religion 
and  philosophy  pursue,  each  in  its  own  way, — I  mean  the  moral 
grandeur  of  humanity.1 

1  We  have  not  ceased  to  claim,  to  earnestly  call  for,  the  alliance  between 
Christianity  and  philosophy,  as  well  as  the  alliance  between  the  monarchy 
and  liberty.  See  particularly  8d  Series,  vol.  iv.,  PhilosopAie  Contemporaine, 
preface  of  the  second  edition ;  4th  Series,  vol.  i.,  Pascal,  1st  and  2d  preface, 
passim;  5th  Series,  vol.  ii.,  Discours  a  la  Uhambre  dfs  Paris  pour  le  Defence 
de  V  Uhiversite  et  de  la  Philosophic.  We  everywhere  profess  the  most  tender 
veneration  for  Christianity, — we  have  only  repelled  the  servitude  of  philoso- 
phy, with  Descartes,  and  the  most  illustrious  doctors  of  ancient  and  modern 
times,  from  St.  Augustine  and  St.  Thomas,  to  the  Cardinal  de  la  Lucerne 
and  the  Bishop  of  Herrnopolis.  Moreover,  we  love  to  think  that  those  quar- 
rels, originating  in  other  times  from  the  deplorable  strife  between  the 
clergy  and  the  University,  have  not  survived  it,  and  that  now  all  sincere 
friends  of  religion  and  philosophy  will  give  each  other  the  hand,  and  will  work 
in  concert  to  encourage  desponding  souls  and  lift  up  burdened  characters. 

15* 


LECTUKE  XYII. 

B^STJME      OF      DOCTRINE. 

Review  of  the  doctrine  contained  in  these  lectures,  and  the  three  orders  of 
facts  on  which  this  doctrine  rests,  with  the  relation  of  each  one  of  them 
to  the  modern  school  that  has  recognized  and  developed  it,  hut  almost 
always  exaggerated  it. — Experience  and  empiricism. — Eeason  and  ideal- 
ism.— Sentiment  and  mysticism. — Theodicea.  Defects  of  different  known 
systems. — The  process  that  conducts  to  true  theodicoa,  and  the  character 
of  certainty  and  reality  that  this  process  gives  to  it. 

HAVING  arrived  at  the  limit  of  this  course,  we  have  a  final 
task  to  perform, — it  is  necessary  to  recall  its  general  spirit  and 
most  important  results. 

From  the  first  lecture,  I  have  signalized  to  you  the  spirit  that 
should  animate  this  instruction, — a  spirit  of  free  inquiry,  recog- 
nizing with  joy  the  truth  wherever  found,  profiting  by  all  the 
systems  that  the  eighteenth  century  has  bequeathed  to  our  times, 
but  confining  itself  to  none  of  them. 

The  eighteenth  century  has  left  to  us  as  an  inheritance  three 
great  schools  which  still  endure — the  English  and  French  school, 
whose  chief  is  Locke,  among  whose  most  accredited  representa- 
tives are  Coudillac,  Helvetius,  and  Saint-Lambert ;  the  Scotch 
school,  with  so  many  celebrated  names,  Hutcheson,  Smith,  Reid, 
Beattie,  Ferguson,  and  Dugald  Stewart;1  the  German  school,  or 
rather  school  of  Kant,  for,  of  all  the  philosophers  beyond  the 
Rhine,  the  philosopher  of  Kcenigsberg  is  almost  the  only  one 
who  belongs  to  history.  Kant  died  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 

1  Still  living  in  1818,  died  in  1828. 


RESUME    OF   DOCTRINE.  347 

teenth  century  j1  the  ashes  of  his  most  illustrious  disciple,  Fichte,8 
are  scarcely  cold.  The  other  renowned  philosophers  of  Germany 
still  live,3  and  escape  our  valuation. 

But  this  is  only  an  ethnographical  enumeration  of  the  schools 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  above  all  necessary  to  consider 
them  in  their  characters,  analogous  or  opposite.  The  Anglo- 
French  school  particularly  represents  empiricism  and  sensualism, 
that  is  to  say,  an  almost  exclusive  importance  attributed  in  all 
parts  of  human  knowledge  to  experience  in  general,  and  especially 
to  sensible  experience.  The  Scotch  school  and  the  German  school 
represent  a  more  or  less  developed  spiritualism.  Finally,  there 
are  philosophers,  for  example,  Hutcheson,  Smith,  and  others, 
who,  mistrusting  the  senses  and  reason,  give  the  supremacy  to 
sentiment. 

Such  are  the  philosophic  schools  in  the  presence  of  which  the 
nineteenth  century  is  placed. 

We  are  compelled  to  avow,  that  none  of  these,  to  our  eyes, 
contains  the  entire  truth.  It  has  been  demonstrated  that  a  con- 
siderable part  of  knowledge  escapes  sensation,  and  we  think  that 
sentiment  is  a  basis  neither  sufficiently  firm,  nor  sufficiently 
broad,  to  support  all  human  science.  We  are,  therefore,  rather 
the  adversary  than  the  partisan  of  the  school  of  Locke  and  Con- 
dillac,  and  of  that  of  Hutcheson  and  Smith.  Are  we  on  that  ac- 
count the  disciple  of  Reid  and  Kant  ?  Yes,  certainly,  we  declare 
our  preference  for  the  direction  impressed  upon  philosophy  by 
these  two  great  men.  We  regard  Reid  as  common  sense  itself, 
and  we  believe  that  we  thus  eulogize  him  in  a  manner  that  would 
touch  him  most.  Common  sense  is  to  us  the  only  legitimate 
point  of  departure,  and  the  constant  and  inviolable  rule  of  science. 
Reid  never  errs ;  his  method  is  true,  his  general  principles  are 
incontestable,  but  we  will  willingly  say  to  this  irreproachable 


1  In  1804.  2  Died,  1814. 

*  This  was  said  in  16 i  8.  Since  then,  Jacobi,  Hegel,  and  Schleiermacher, 
with  so  many  others,  have  disappeared.  Schelling  alone  survives  the  ruina 
of  the  German  philosophy. 


348  LECTURE   SVENTEKNTIT. 

genius, —  Sapere  aude.  Kant  is  far  from  being  as  sure  a  guide 
as  Reid.  Both  excel  in  analysis ;  but  Reid  stops  there,  and  Kant 
builds  upon  analysis  a  system  irreconcilable  with  it.  He  elevates 
reason  above  sensation  and  sentiment ;  he  shows  with  great  skill 
how  reason  produces  by  itself,  and  by  the  laws  attached  to  its 
exercise,  nearly  all  human  knowledge  ;  there  is  only  one  misfor- 
tune, which  is  that  all  this  fine  edifice  is  destitute  of  reality. 
Dogmatical  in  analysis,  Kant  is  skeptical  in  his  conclusions.  His 
skepticism  is  the  most  learned,  most  moral,  that  ever  existed ; 
but,  in  fine,  it  is  always  skepticism.  This  is  saying  plainly  enough 
that  we  are  far  from  belonging  to  the  school  of  the  philosopher 
of  Koenigsberg. 

In  general,  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  we  are  in  favor  of  sys- 
tems that  are  themselves  in  favor  of  reason.  Accordingly,  in  an- 
tiquity, we  side  with  Plato  against  his  adversaries ;  among  the 
moderns,  with  Descartes  against  Locke,  with  Reid  against  Hume, 
with  Kant  against  both  Condillac  and  Smith.  But  while  we 
acknowledge  reason  as  a  power  superior  to  sensation  and  senti- 
ment, as  being,  par  excellence,  the  faculty  of  every  kind  of  knowl- 
edge, the  faculty  of  the  true,  the  faculty  of  the  beautiful,  the 
faculty  of  the  good,  we  are  persuaded  that  reason  cannot  be  de- 
veloped without  conditions  that  are  foreign  to  it,  cannot  suffice 
for  the  government  of  man  without  the  aid  of  another  power : 
that  power  which  is  not  reason,  which  reason  cannot  do  without, 
is  sentiment ;  those  conditions,  without  which  reason  cannot  be 
developed,  are  the  senses.  It  is  seen  what  for  us  is  the  import- 
ance of  sensation  and  sentiment :  how,  consequently,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  us  absolutely  to  condemn  either  the  philosophy  of  sensa- 
tion, or,  much  more,  that  of  sentiment. 

Such  are  the  very  simple  foundations  of  our  eclecticism.  It  is 
not  in  us  the  fruit  of  a  desire  for  innovation,  and  for  making  our- 
self  a  place  apart  among  the  historians  of  philosophy ;  no,  it  is 
philosophy  itself  that  imposes  on  us  our  historical  views.  It  is 
not  our  fault  if  God  has  made  the  human  soul  larger  than  all 
systems,  and  we  also  aver  that  we  are  also  much  rejoiced  that  all 


RESUME   OF   DOCTRINE.  34:9 

systems  are  not  absurd.  Without  giving  the  lie  to  the  most  cer- 
tain facts  signalized  and  established  by  ourself,  it  was  indeed 
necessary,  on  finding  them  scattered  in  the  history  of  philosophy, 
to  recognize  and  respect  them,  and  if  the  history  of  philosophy, 
thus  considered,  no  longer  appeared  a  mass  of  senseless  systems 
a  chaos,  without  light,  and  without  issue ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  it 
became,  in  some  sort,  a  living  philosophy,  that  was,  it  should 
seem,  a  progress  on  which  one  might  felicitate  himself,  one  of  the 
most  fortunate  conquests  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  very  tri- 
umphing of  the  philosophic  spirit. 

We  have,  therefore,  no  doubt  in  regard  to  the  excellence  of 
the  enterprise;  the  whole  question  for  us  is  in  the  execution. 
Let  us  see,  let  us  compare  what  we  have  done  with  what  we  have 
wished  to  do. 

Let  us  ask,  in  the  first  place,  whether  we  have  been  just  to- 
wards that  great  philosophy  represented  in  antiquity  by  Aristotle, 
whose  best  model  among  the  moderns  is  the  wise  author  of  the 
Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding. 

There  is  in  the  philosophy  of  sensation  what  is  true  and  what 
is  false.  The  false  is  the  pretension  of  explaining  all  human 
knowledge  by  the  acquisitions  of  the  senses ;  this  pretension  is 
the  system  itself;  we  reject  it,  and  the  system  with  it.  The  true 
is  that  sensibility,  considered  in  its  external  and  visible  organs, 
and  in  its  internal  organs,  the  invisible  seats  of  the  vital  func- 
tions, is  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  development  of  all 
our  faculties,  not  only  of  the  faculties  that  evidently  pertain  to 
sensibility,  but  of  those  that  seem  to  be  most  remote  from  it. 
This  true  side  of  sensualism  we  have  everywhere  recognized  and 
elucidated  in  metaphysics,  aesthetics,  ethics,  and  theodicea. 

For  us,  theodicea,  ethics,  aesthetics,  metaphysics,  rest  on  psy- 
chology, and  the  first  principle  of  our  psychology  is  that  the 
condition  of  all  exercise  of  mind  and  soul  is  an  impression  made 
on  our  organs,  and  a  movement  of  the  vital  functions. 

Man  is  not  a  pure  spirit ;  hi  has  a  body  which  is  for  the  spirit 
sometimes  an  obstacle,  sometimes  a  means,  always  an  inseparable 


350  LECTURE   SEVENTEENTH. 

companion.  The  senses  are  not,  as  Plato  and  Malebranche  have 
too  often  said,  a  prison  for  the  soul,  but  much  rather  windows 
looking  out  upon  nature,  through  which  the  soul  communicates 
with  the  universe.  There  is  an  entire  part  of  Locke's  polemic 
against  the  theories  of  innate  ideas  that  is  to  our  eyes  perfectly 
true.  We  are  the  first  to  invoke  experience  in  philosophy.  Ex- 
perience saves  philosophy  from  hypothesis,  from  abstraction, 
from  the  exclusively  deductive  method,  that  is  to  say,  from  the 
geometrical  method.  It  is  on  account  of  having  abandoned  the 
solid  ground  of  experience,  that  Spinoza,  attaching  himself  to 
certain  sides  of  Cartesianism,1  and  closing  his  eyes  to  all  the 
others,  forgetting  its  method,  its  essential  character,  and  its  most 
certain  principles,  reared  a  hypothetical  system,  or  made  from  an 
arbitrary  definition  spring  with  the  last  degree  of  rigor  a  whole 
series  of  deductions,  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  reality.  It 
is  also  on  account  of  having  exchanged  experience  for  a  sys- 
tematic analysis,  that  Condillac,  an  unfaithful  disciple  of  Locke, 
undertook  to  draw  from  a  single  fact,  and  from  an  ill-observed 
fact,  all  knowledge,  by  the  aid  of  a  series  of  verbal  transforma- 
tions, whose  last  result  is  a  nominalism,  like  that  of  the  later 
scholastics.  Experience  does  not  contain  all  science,  but  it  fur- 
nishes the  conditions  of  all  science.  Space  is  nothing  for  us  with- 
out visible  and  tangible  bodies  that  occupy  it,  time  is  nothing 
without  the  succession  of  events,  cause  without  its  effects,  sub- 
stance without  its  modes,  law  without  the  phenomena  that  it 
rules.*  Reason  would  reveal  to  us  no  universal  and  necessary 
truth,  if  consciousness  and  the  senses  did  not  suggest  to  us  par- 
ticular and  contingent  notions.  In  aesthetics,  while  severely  dis- 
tinguishing between  the  beautiful  and  the  agreeable,  we  have 
shown  that  the  agreeable  is  the  constant  accompaniment  of  the 
beautiful,3  and  that  if  art  has  for  its  supreme  law  the  expression 
of  the  ideal,  .t  must  express  it  under  an  animated  and  living  form 

1  FRAGMENTS  DE  PHILOSOPHLE  CARTESIENNE,  p.  429  :  Des  Rapports  du  Garte- 
si-enisme  et  du  Spinozisme. 
9  Part  1st,  lectures  1  and  2.  3  Part  2d. 


RESUME   OF  DOCTRINE.  351 

which  puts  it  in  relation  with  our  senses,  with  our  imagination, 
above  all,  with  our  heart.  In  ethics,  if  we  have  placed  Kant  and 
stoicism  far  above  epicureanism  and  Helvetius,  we  have  guarded 
ourselves  against  an  insensibility  and  an  asceticism  which  are  con- 
trary to  human  nature.  .We  have  given  to  reason  neither  the 
duty  nor  the  right  to  smother  the  natural  passions,  but  to  rule 
them  ;  we  have  not  wished  to  wrest  from  the  soul  the  instinct  of 
happiness,  without  which  life  would  not  be  supportable  for  a 
day,  nor  society  for  an  hour  ;  we  have  proposed  to  enlighten  this 
instinct,  to  show  it  the  concealed  but  real  harmony  which  it  sus- 
tains with  virtue,  and  to  open  to  it  infinite  prospects.1 

With  these  empirical  elements,  idealism  is  guarded  from  that 
mystical  infatuation  which,  little  by  little,  gains  and  seizes  it 
when  it  is  wholly  alone,  and  brings  it  into  discredit  with  sound 
and  severe  minds.  In  our  works — and  why  should  we  not  say 
it  ? — we  have  often  presented  the  thought  of  Locke,  whom  we 
regard  as  one  of  the  best  and  most  sensible  men  that  ever  lived. 
He  is  among  those  secret  and  illustrious  advisers  with  whom  we 
support  our  weakness.  More  than  one  happy  thought  we  owe 
to  him  ;  and  we  often  ask  ourself  whether  investigations  directed 
with  the  circumspect  method  which  we  try  to  carry  into  ours, 
would  not  have  been  accepted  by  his  sincerity  and  wisdom. 
Locke  is  for  us  the  true  representative,  the  most  original,  and  al- 
together the  most  temperate  of  the  empirical  school  Tied  to  a 
system,  he  still  preserves  a  rare  spirit  of  liberty, — under  the 
name  of  reflection  he  admits  another  source  of  knowledge  than 
sensation ;  and  this  concession  to  common  sense  is  very  impor- 
tant. Condillac,  by  rejecting  this  concession,  carried  to  extremes 
and  spoiled  the  doctrine  of  Locke,  and  made  of  it  a  narrow,  ex- 
clusive, entirely  false  system, — sensualism,  to  speak  properly. 
Condillac  works  upon  chimeras  reduced  to  signs,  with  which  he 
sports  at  his  ease.  We  seek  in  vain  in  his  writings,  especially  in 
the  last,  some  trace  of  human  nature.  One  truly  believes  him- 

1  Part  3d. 


352  LECTUBE   SEVENTEENTH. 

self  to  be  in  the  realm  of  shades,  per  inania  regnal  The  Essay 
on  the  Human  Understanding  produces  the  opposite  impression. 
Locke  is  a  disciple  of  Descartes,  whom  the  excesses  of  Male- 
branche  have  thrown  to  an  opposite  excess :  he  is  one  of  the 
founders  of  psychology,  he  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  pro- 
found connoisseurs  of  human  nature,  and  his  doctrine,  somewhat 
unsteady  but  always  moderate,  is  worthy  of  having  a  place  m  a 
true  eclecticism.4 

By  the  side  of  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  there  is  one  much 
greater,  which  it  is  important  to  preserve  from  all  exaggeration, 
in  order  to  maintain  it  in  all  its  height.  Founded  in  antiquity  by 
Socrates,  constituted  by  Plato,  renewed  by  Descartes,  idealism 
embraces,  among  the  moderns,  men  of  the  highest  renown.  It 
speaks  to  man  in  the  name  of  what  is  noblest  in  man.  It  de- 
mands the  rights  of  reason  ;  it  establishes  in  science,  in  art,  and 
in  ethics  fixed  and  invariable  principles,  and  from  this  imperfect 
existence  it  elevates  us  towards  another  world,  the  world  of  the 
eternal,  of  the  infinite,  of  the  absolute. 

This  great  philosophy  has  all  our  preferences,  and  we  shall  not 
be  accused  of  having  given  it  too  little  place  in  these  lectures. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  especially  represented  in  differ- 
ent degrees  by  Reid  and  Kant.  We  wholly  accept  Reid,  with 
the  exception  of  his  historical  views,  which  are  too  insufficient, 
and  often  mixed  with  error.3  There  are  two  parts  in  Kant, — the 
analytical  part,  and  the  dialectical  part,  as  he  calls  them.4  We 
admit  the  one  and  reject  the  other.  In  this  whole  course  we 
have  borrowed  much  from  the  Critique  of  Speculative  Reason, 
the  Critique  of  Judgment,  and  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason. 
These  three  works  are,  in  our  eyes,  admirable  monuments  of 


1  On  Condillac,  1st  Series,  vol.  i.,  passim,  and  particularly  vol.  iii.,  lectures 
2  and  3. 

"  We  have  never  spoken  of  Locke  except  with  sincere  respect,  even  while 
combating  him.  See  1st  Series,  vol.  i.,  course  of  1817,  Dlscours  <F  Overture, 
vol.  ii.  lecture  1,  and  especially  2d  Series,  vol.  iii.,  passim. 

*  See  1st  Series,  vol.  iv.,  lectures  on  Reid. 

4  IUd.,  vol.  v. 


RESUME   OF   DOCTRINE.  353 

philosophic  genius, — they  are  filled  with  treasures  of  observation 
and  analysis.1 

With  Reid  and  Kant,  we  recognize  reason  as  the  faculty  of 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  It  is  to  its  proper  virtue 
that  we  directly  refer  knowledge  in  its  humblest  and  in  its .  most 
elevated  part.  All  the  systematic  pretensions  of  sensualism  arc 
broken  against  the  manifest  reality  of  universal  and  necessary 
truths  which  are  incontestably  in  our  mind.  At  each  instant, 
whether  we  know  it  or  not,  we  bear  universal  and  necessary 
judgments.  In  the  simplest  propositions  is  enveloped  the  prin- 
ciple of  substance  and  being.  We  cannot  take  a  step  in  life  with- 
out concluding  from  an  event  in  the  existence  of  its  cause. 
These  principles  are  absolutely  true,  they  are  true  everywhere 
and  always.  Now,  experience  apprises  us  of  what  happens  hero, 
and  there,  to-day  or  yesterday  ;  but  of  what  happens  everywhere 
and  always,  especially  of  what  cannot  but  happen,  how  can  it 
apprise  us,  since  it  is  itself  always  limited  to  time  and  space '? 
There  are,  then,  in  man  principles  superior  to  experience. 

Such  principles  can  alone  give  a  firm  basis  to  science.  Phe- 
nomena are  the  objects  of  science  only  so  far  as  they  reveal  some- 
thing superior  to  themselves,  that  is  to  say,  laws.  Natural  his- 
tory does  not  study  such  or  such  an  individual,  but  the  generic 
type  that  every  individual  bears  in  itself,  that  alone  remains  un- 
changeable, when  the  individuals  pass  away  and  vanish.  If 
there  is  in  us  no  other  faculty  of  knowing  than  sensation,  we 
never  know  aught  but  what  is  passing  in  things,  and  that,  tod, 
we  know  only  with  the  most  uncertain  knowledge,  since  senst- 


1  For  more  than  twenty  years  we  have  thought  of  translating  and  pub- 
lishing the  three  Critiques,  joining  to  them  a  selection  from  the  smaller  pro- 
ductions of  Kant.  Time  has  been  wanting  to  us  for  the  completion  of  our 
design ;  but  a  young  and  skilful  professor  of  philosophy,  a  graduate  of  the. 
Normal  School,  has  been  willing  to  supply  our  place,  and  to  undertake  to 
give  to  the  French  public  a  faithful  and  intelligent  version  of  the  greatest 
thinker  of  the  eighteenth  century.  M.  Barni  has  worthily  commenced  the 
useful  and  difficult  enterprise  which  we  have  remitted  to  his  zeal,  and  pur- 
sties  it  with  courage  and  talent. 


354  LECTURE   SEVENTEENTH. 

bility  will  be  its  only  measure,  which  is  so  variable  in  itself  and 
so  different  in  different  individuals.  Each  of  us  will  have  his 
own  science,  a  science  contradictory  and  fragile,  which  one  mo- 
ment produces  and  another  destroys,  false  as  well  as  true)  since 
what  is  true  for  me  is  false  for  you,  and  will  even  be  false  for 
me  in  a  little  while.  Such  are  science  and  truth  in  the  doctrine 
of  sensation.  On  the  contrary,  necessary  and  immutable  prin- 
ciples found  a  science  necessary  and  immutable  as  themselves, — 
the  truth  which  they  gave  us  is  neither  mine  nor  yours,  neither 
the  truth  of  to-day,  nor  that  of  to-morrow,  but  truth  in  itself. 

The  same  spirit  transferred  to  aesthetics  has  enabled  us  to 
seize  the  beautiful  by  the  side  of  the  agreeable,  and,  above  differ- 
ent and  imperfect  beauties  which  nature  offers  to  us,  to  seize  an 
ideal  beauty,  one  and  perfect,  without  a  model  in  nature,  and  the 
only  model  worthy  of  genius. 

In  ethics  we  have  shown  that  there  is  an  essential  distinction 
between  good  and  evil ;  that  the  idea  of  the  good  is  an  idea  just 
as  absolute  as  the  idea  of  the  beautiful  and  that  of  the  true ; 
that  the  good  is  a  universal  and  necessary  truth,  marked  with 
the  particular  character  that  it  ought  to  be  practised.  By  the 
side  of  interest,  which  is  the  law  of  sensibility,  reason  has  made 
us  recognize  the  law  of  duty,  which  a  free  being  can  alone  fulfil. 
From  these  ethics  has  sprung  a  generous  political  doctrine,  giving 
to  right  a  sure  foundation  in  the  respect  due  to  the  person,  estab- 
lishing true  liberty,  and  true  equality,  and  calling  for  institutions, 
protective  of  botk,  which  do  not  rest  on  the  mobile  and  arbitrary 
will  of  the  legislator,  whether  people  or  monarch,  but  on  the  na- 
ture of  things,  on  truth  and  justice. 

From  empiricism  we  have  retained  the  maxim  which  gives 
empiricism  its  whole  force — that  the  conditions  of  science,  of  art, 
of  ethics,  are  in  experience,  and  often  in  sensible  experience. 
But  we  profess  at  the  same  time  this  other  maxim,  that  the 
foundation  of  science  is  absolute  truth,  that  the  direct  foundation 
of  art  is  absolute  beauty,  that  the  direct  foundation  of  ethics  and 
politics  is  the  good,  is  duty,  is  right,  and  that  what  reveals  to  us 


RESUME    OF   DOCTRINE.  355 

these  absolute  ideas  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  is 
reason.  The  foundation  of  our  doctrine  is,  therefore,  idealism 
rightly  tempered  by  empiricism. 

But  what  would  be  the  use  of  having  restored  to  reason  the 
power  of  elevating  itself  to  absolute  principles,  placed  above  ex- 
perience, although  experience  furnishes  their  external  conditions, 
if,  to  adopt  the  language  of  Kant,1  these  principles  have  no  ob- 
jective value  ?  What  good  could  result  from  having  determined 
with  a  precision  until  then  unknown  the  respective  domains  of 
experience  and  reason,  if,  wholly  superior  as  it  is  to  the  senses 
and  experience,  reason  is  captive  in  their  inclosure,  and  we  know 
nothing  beyond  with  certainty  ?  Thereby,  then,  we  return  by  a 
detour  to  skepticism  to  which  sensualism  conducts  us  directly, 
and  at  less  expense.  To  say  that  there  is  no  principle  of  causal- 
ity, or  to  say  that  this  principle  has  no  force  out  of  the  subject 
that  possesses  it, — is  it  not  saying  the  same  thing  ?  Kant  avows 
that  man  has  no  right  to  affirm  that  there  are  out  of  him  real 
causes,  time,  or  space,  or  that  he  himself  has  a  spiritual  and  free 
soul.  This  acknowledgment  would  perfectly  satisfy  Hume ;  it 
would  be  of  veiy  little  importance  to  him  that  the  reason  of  man, 
according  to  Kant,  might  conceive,  and  even  could  not  but  con- 
ceive, the  ideas  of  cause,  time,  space,  liberty,  spirit,  provided 
these  ideas  are  applied  to  nothing  real.  I  see  therein,  at  most, 
only  a  torment  for  human  reason,  at  once  so  poor  and  so  rich,  so 
full  and  so  void. 

A  third  doctrine,  finding  sensation  insufficient,  and  also  discon- 
tented with  reason,  which  it  confounds  with  reasoning,  thinks  to 
approach  common  sense  by  making  science,  art,  and  ethics  rest  on 
sentiment.  It  would  have  us  confide  ourselves  to  the  instinct  of 
the  heart,  to  that  instinct,  nobler  than  sensation,  and  more  subtle 
than  reasoning.  Is  it  not  the  heart,  in  fact,  that  feels  the  beau- 
tiful and  the  good  ?  Is  it  not  the  heart  that,  in  all  the  great  cir- 
cumstances of  life,  when  passion  and  sophism  obscure  to  our  eyes 

1  Part  1st,  Lecture  3. 


356  LECTURE   SEVENTEENTH. 

the  holy  idea  of  duty  and  virtue,  makes  it  shine  forth  with  an 
irresistible  light,  and,  at  the  same  time,  warms  us,  animates  us, 
and  gives  us  the  courage  to  practise  it  ? 

We  also  have  recognized  that  admirable  phenomenon  which  is 
called  sentiment ;  we  even  believe  that  here  will  be  found  a  more 
precise  and  more  complete  analysis  of  it  than  in  the  writings 
where  sentiment  reigns  alone.  Yes,  there  is  an  exquisite  pleas- 
ure attached  to  the  contemplation  of  the  truth,  to  the  reproduc- 
tion of  the  beautiful,  to  the  practice  of  the  good ;  there  is  in  us 
an  innate  love  for  all  these  things ;  and  when  great  rigor  is  not 
aimed  at,  it  may  very  well  be  said  that  it  is  the  heart  which  dis- 
cerns truth,  that  the  heart  is  and  ought  to  be  the  light  and  guide 
of  our  life. 

To  the  eyes  of  an  unpractised  analysis,  reason  in  its  natural 
and  spontaneous  exercise  is  confounded  with  sentiment  by  a 
multitude  of  resemblances.1  Sentiment  is  intimately  attached  to 
reason ;  it  is  its  sensible  form.  At  the  foundation  of  sentiment 
is  reason,  which  communicates  to  it  its  authority,  whilst  senti- 
ment lends  to  reason  its  charm  and  power.  Is  not  the  widest 
spread  and  the  most  touching  proof  of  the  existence  of  God  that 
spontaneous  impulse  of  the  heart  which,  in  the  consciousness  of 
our  miseries,  and  at  the  sight  of  the  imperfections  of  our  race 
which  press  upon  our  attention,  irresistibly  suggests  to  us  the 
confused  idea  of  an  infinite  and  perfect  being,  fills  us,  at  this 
idea,  with  an  inexpressible  emotion,  moistens  our  eyes  with  tears, 
or  even  prostrates  us  on  our  knees  before  him  whom  the  heart 
reveals  to  us,  even  when  the  reason  refuses  to  believe  in  him  ? 
But  look  more  closely,  and  you  will  see  that  this  incredulous 
reason  is  reasoning  supported  by  principles  whose  bearing  is  in- 
sufficient ;  you  will  see  that  what  reveals  the  infinite  and  perfect 
being  is  precisely  reason  itself;2  and  that,  in  turn,  it  is  this  rev- 


1  Lecture  5,  Mysticism. 

4  This  pretended  proof  of  sentiment  is,  in  fact,  the  Cartesian  proof  itself. 
See  lectures  4  and  16. 


RESUME   OF   DOCTRINE.  357 

elation  of  the  infinite  by  reason,  which,  passing  into  sentiment, 
produces  the  emotion  and  the  inspiration  that  we  have  mentioned. 
May  heaven  grant  that  we  shall  never  reject  the  aid  of  sentiment! 
On  the  contrary,  we  invoke  it  both  for  others  and  ourself.  Here 
we  are  with  the  people,  or  rather  we  are  the  people.  It  is  to  the 
light  of  the  heart,  which  is  borrowed  from  that  of  reason,  but  re- 
flects it  more  vividly  in  the  depths  of  the  soul,  that  we  confide 
ourselves,  in  order  to  preserve  all  great  truths  in  the  soul  of  the 
ignorant,  and  even  to  save  them  in  the  mind  of  the  philosopher 
from  the  aberrations  or  refinements  of  an  ambitious  philosophy. 

We  think,  with  Quintilian  and  Vauvenargues,  that  the  nobility 
of  sentiment  makes  the  nobility  of  thought.  Enthusiasm  is  the 
principle  of  great  works  as  well  as  of  great  actions.  Without  the 
love  of  the  beautiful,  the  artist  will  produce  only  works  that  are 
perhaps  regular  but  frigid,  that  will  possibly  please  the  geometri- 
cian, but  not  the  man  of  taste.  In  order  to  communicate  life  to 
the  canvas,  to  the  marble,  to  speech,  it  must  be  born  in  one's  self. 
It  is  the  heart  mingled  with  logic  that  makes  true  eloquence ;  it 
is  the  heart  mingled  with  imagination  that  makes  great  poetry. 
Think  of  Homer,  of  Corneille,  of  Bossuet, — their  most  character- 
istic trait  is  pathos,  and  pathos  is  a  cry  of  the  soul.  But  it  is 
especially  in  ethics  that  sentiment  shines  forth.  Sentiment,  as 
we  have  already  said,  is  as  it  were  a  divine  grace  that  aids  us  in 
the  fulfilment  of  the  serious  and  austere  law  of  duty.  How  often 
does  it  happen  that  in  delicate,  complicated,  difficult  situations, 
we  know  not  how  to  ascertain  wherein  is  the  true,  wherein  is  the 
good  !  Sentiment  comes  to  the  aid  of  reasoning  which  wavers  ; 
it  speaks,  and  all  uncertainties  are  dissipated.  In  listening  to  its 
inspirations,  we  may  act  imprudently,  but  we  rarely  act  ill :  the 
voice  of  the  heart  is  the  voice  of  God. 

We,  therefore,  give  a  prominent  place  to  this  noble  element  of 
human  nature.  We  believe  that  man  is  quite  as  great  by  heart 
as  by  reason.  We  have  a  high  regard  for  the  generous  writers 
who,  in  the  looseness  of  principles  and  manners  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  opposed  the  baseness  of  calculation  and  interest  with  the 


358  LECTURE   SEVENTEENTH. 

beauty  of  sentiment.  We  are  with  Hutcheson  against  Hobbes, 
with  Rousseau  against  Helvetius,  with  the  author  of  Woldemar1 
against  the  ethics  of  egoism  or  those  of  the  schools.  We  borrow 
from  them  what  truth  they  have,  we  leave  their  useless  or  dan- 
gerous exaggerations.  Sentiment  must  be  joined  to  reason  ;  but 
reason  must  not  be  replaced  by  sentiment.  In  the  first  place,  it 
is  contrary  to  facts  to  take  reason  for  reasoning,  and  to  envelop 
them  in  the  same  criticism.  And  then,  after  all,  reasoning  is  the 
legitimate  instrument  of  reason ;  its  value  is  determined  by  that 
of  the  principles  on  which  it  rests.  In  th.e  next  place,  reason,  and 
especially  spontaneous  reason,  is,  like  sentiment,  immediate  and 
direct;  it  goes  straight  to  its  object,  without  passing  through 
analysis,  abstraction,  and  deduction,  excellent  operations  without 
doubt,  but  they  suppose  a  primary  operation,  the  pure  and  simple 
apperception  of  the  truth.2  It  is  wrong  to  attribute  this  apper- 
ception to  sentiment.  Sentiment  is  an  emotion,  not  a  judgment ; 
it  enjoys  or  suffers,  it  loves  or  hates,  it  does  not  know.  It  is  not 
universal  like  reason ;  and  as  it  still  pertains  on  some  side  to  or- 
ganization, it  even  borrows  from  the  organization  something  of 
its  inconstancy.  In  fine,  sentiment  follows  reason,  and  does  not 
precede  it.  Therefore,  in  suppressing  reason,  we  suppress  the 
sentiment  which  emanates  from  it,  and  science,  art,  and  ethics 
lack  firm  and  solid  bases. 

Psychology,  aesthetics,  and  ethics,  have  conducted  us  to  an 
order  of  investigations  more  difficult  and  more  elevated,  which 
are  mingled  with  all  the  others,  and  crown  them — theodicea. 

We  know  that  theodicea  is  the  rock  of  philosophy.  We 
might  shun  it,  and  stop  in  the  regions — already  very  high — of 
the  universal  and  necessary  principles  of  the  true,  the  beautiful, 
and  the  good,  without  going  farther,  without  ascending  to  the 
principles  of  these  principles,  to  the  reason  of  reason,  to  the  source 


1  M.  Jacobi.    See  the  Manual  of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  by  Tennemann, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  318. 
8  On  spontaneous  reason  and  reflective  reason,  see  1st  part,  lect.  2  and  3. 


RESUME    OF    DOCTRINE.  359 

of  truth.  But  such  a  prudence  is,  at  bottom,  only  a  disguised 
skepticism.  Either  philosophy  is  not,  or  it  is  the  last  explanation 
of  all  things.  Is  it,  then,  true  that  God  is  to  us  an  inexplicable 
enigma, — he  without  whom  the  most  certain  of  all  things  that 
thus  far  we  have  discovered  would  be  for  us  an  insupportable 
enigma  ?  If  philosophy  is  incapable  of  arriving  at  the  knowledge 
of  God,  it  is  powerless ;  for  if  it  does  not  possess  God,  it  possesses 
nothing.  But  we  are  convinced  that  the  need  of  knowing  has 
not  been  given  us  in  vain,  and  that  the  desire  of  knowing  the 
principle  of  our  being  bears  witness  to  the  right  and  power  of 
knowing  which  we  have.  Accordingly,  after  having  discoursed 
to  you  about  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  we  have  not 
feared  to  speak  to  you  of  God. 

More  than  one  road  may  lead  us  to  God.  We  do  not  pretend 
to  close  any  of  them ;  but  it  was  necessary  for  us  to  follow  the 
one  that  was  open  to  us,  that  which  the  nature  and  subject  of 
our  instruction  opened  to  us. 

Universal  and  necessary  truths  are  not  general  ideas  which  our 
mind  draws  by  way  of  reasoning  from  particular  things ;  for  par- 
ticular things  are  relative  and  contingent,  and  cannot  contain  the 
universal  and  necessary.  On  the  other  hand,  these  truths  do  not 
subsist  by  themselves ;  they  would  thus  be  only  pure  abstractions, 
suspended  in  vacuity  and  without  relation  to  any  thing.  Truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness  are  attributes  and  not  entities.  Now  there 
are  no  attributes  without  a  subject.  And  as  here  the  question 
is  concerning  absolute  truth,  beauty  and  goodness,  their  substance 
can  be  nothing  else  than  absolute  being.  It  is  thus  that  we 
arrive  at  God.  Once  more,  there  are  many  other  means  of  arri- 
ving at  him ;  but  we  hold  fast  to  this  legitimate  and  sure  way. 

For  us,  as  for  Plato,  whom  we  have  defended  against  a  too 
narrow  interpretation,1  absolute  truth  is  in  God, — it  is  God  him- 
self under  one  of  his  phases.  Since  Plato,  the  greatest  minds, 
Saint  Augustine,  Descartes,  Bossuet,  Leibnitz,  agree  in  putting  in 

1  Lectures  4  and  5. 


360  LECTUKE   SEVENTEENTH. 

God,  as  in  their  source,  the  principles  of  knowledge  as  well  aa 
existence.  From  him  things  derive  at  once  their  intelligibility 
and  their  being.  It  is  by  the  participation  of  the  divine  reason 
that  our  reason  possesses  something  absolute.  Every  judgment 
of  reason  envelops  a  necessary  truth,  and  every  necessary  truth 
supposes  necessary  being. 

If  all  perfection  belongs  to  the  perfect  being,  God  will  possess 
beauty  in  its  plenitude.  The  father  of  the  world,  of  its  laws,  of 
its  ravishing  harmonies,  the  author  of  forms,  colors,  and  sounds, 
he  is  the  principle  of  beauty  in  nature.  It  is  he  whom  we  adore, 
without  knowing  it,  under  the  name  of  the  ideal,  when  our  imag- 
ination, borne  on  from  beauties  to  beauties,  calls  for  a  final  beauty 
in  which  it  may  find  repose.  It  is  to  him  that  the  artist,  discon- 
tented with  the  imperfect  beauties  of  nature  and  those  that  he 
creates  himself,  comes  to  ask  for  higher  inspirations.  It  is  in  him 
that  are  summed  up  the  main  forms  of  every  kind  of  beauty,  the 
beautiful  and  the  sublime,  since  he  satisfies  all  our  faculties  by 
his  perfections,  and  overwhelms  them  with  his  infinitude. 

God  is  the  principle  of  moral  truths,  as  well  as  of  all  other 
truths.  All  our  duties  are  comprised  in  justice  and  charity. 
These  two  great  precepts  have  not  been  made  by  us ;  they  have 
been  imposed  on  us ;  from  whom,  then,  can  they  come,  except 
from  a  legislator  essentially  just  and  good?  Therein,  in  our 
opinion,  is  an  invincible  demonstration  of  the  divine  justice 
and  charity : — this  demonstration  elucidates  and  sustains  all 
others.  In  this  immense  universe,  of  which  we  catch  a  glimpse 
of  a  comparatively  insignificant  portion,  every  thing,  in  spite  of 
more  than  one  obscurity,  seems  ordered  in  view  of  general  good, 
and  this  plan  attests  a  Providence.  To  the  physical  order  which 
one  in  good  faith  can  scarcely  deny,  add  the  certainty,  the  evi- 
dence of  the  moral  order  that  we  bear  in  ourselves.  This  order 
supposes  the  harmony  of  virtue  and  goodness ;  it  therefore  re- 
quires it.  Without  doubt  this  harmony  already  appears  in  the 
visible  world,  in  the  natural  consequences  of  good  and  bad  actions, 
in  society  which  punishes  and  rewards,  in  public  esteem  and  con- 


RESUME   OF  DOCTRINE.  361 

tempt,  especially  in  the  troubles  and  joys  of  conscience.  Although 
this  necessary  law  of  order  is  not  always  exactly  fulfilled,  it  never- 
theless ought  to  be,  or  the  moral  order  is  not  satisfied,  and  the 
intimate  nature  of  things,  their  moral  nature,  remains  violated, 
troubled,  perverted.  There  must,  then,  be  a  being  who  takes  it 
upon  himself  to  fulfil,  in  a  time  that  he  has  reserved  to  himself, 
and  in  a  manner  that  will  be  proper,  the  order  of  which  he  has 
put  in  us  the  inviolable  need ;  and  this  being  is  again,  God. 

Thus,  on  all  sides,  on  that  of  metaphysics,  on  that  of  aesthetics, 
especially  on  that  of  ethics,  we  elevate  ourselves  to  the  same  prin- 
ciple, the  common  centre,  the  last  foundation,  of  all  truth,  all 
beauty,  all  goodness.  The  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  are 
only  different  revelations  of  the  same  being.  Human  intelligence, 
interrogated  in  regard  to  all  these  ideas  which  are  incontestably 
in  it,  always  makes  us  the  same  response ;  it  sends  us  back  to  the 
same  explanation, — at  the  foundation  of  all,  above  all,  God,  always 
God. 

We  have  arrived,  then,  from  degree  to  degree,  at  religion. 
We  are  in  fellowship  with  the  great  philosophies  which  all  pro- 
claim a  God,  and,  at  the  same  time,  with  the  religions  that  cover 
the  earth,  with  the  Christian  religion,  incomparably  the  most  per- 
fect and  the  most  holy.  As  long  as  philosophy  has  not  reached 
natural  religion, — and  by  this  we  mean,  not  the  religion  at  which 
man  arrives  in  that  hypothetical  state  that  is  called  the  state  of 
nature,  but  the  religion  which  is  revealed  to  us  by  the  natural 
light  accorded  to  all  men, — it  remains  beneath  all  worship,  even 
the  most  imperfect,  which  at  least  gives  to  man  a  father,  a  wit- 
ness, a  consoler,  a  judge.  A  true  theodicea  borrows  in  some  sort 
from  all  religious  beliefs  their  common  principle,  and  returns  it  to 
them  surrounded  with  light,  elevated  above  all  uncertainty, 
guarded  against  all  attack.  Philosophy  may  present  itself  in  its 
turn  to  mankind ;  it  also  has  a  right  to  man's  confidence,  for  it 
speaks  to  him  of  God  in  the  name  of  all  his  needs  and  all  his  fac- 
ulties, in  the  name  of  reason  and  sentiment. 

Observe  that  we  have  arrived  at  these  high  conclusions  without 
16 


362  LECTUKE   SEVENTEENTH. 

any  hypothesis,  by  the  aid  of  processes  at  once  very  simple  and 
perfectly  rigorous.  Truths  of  different  orders  being  given,  truths 
which  have  not  been  made  by  us,  and  are  not  sufficient  for  them- 
selves, we  have  ascended  from  these  truths  to  their  author,  as  one 
goes  from  the  effect  to  the  cause,  from  the  sign  to  the  thing  sig- 
nified, from  phenomenon  to  being,  from  quality  to  subject.  These 
two  principles — that  every  effect  supposes  a  cause,  and  every 
quality  a  subject — are  universal  and  necessary  principles.  They 
have  been  put  by  us  in  their  full  light,  and  demonstrated  in  the 
manner  in  which  principles  undemonstrable,  because  they  are 
primitive,  can  be  demonstrated.  Moreover,  to  what  are  these 
necessary  principles  applied  ?  To  metaphysical  and  moral  truths, 
which  are  also  necessary.  It  was  therefore  necessary  to  conclude 
in  the  existence  of  a  cause  and  a  necessary  being,  or,  indeed,  it 
was  necessary  to  deny  either  the  necessity  of  the  principle  ot 
cause  and  the  principle  of  substance,  or  the  necessity  of  the  truths 
to  which  we  applied  them,  that  is  to  say,  to  renounce  all  notions 
of  common  sense ;  for  these  very  principles  and  these  truths, 
with  their  character  of  universality  and  necessity,  compose  com- 
mon sense. 

Not  only  is  it  certain  that  every  effect  supposes  a  cause,  and 
every  quality  a  being,  but  it  is  equally  certain  that  an  effect  of 
such  a  nature  supposes  a  cause  of  the  same  nature,  and  that  a 
quality  or  an  attribute  marked  with  such  or  such  essential  char- 
acters supposes  a  being  in  which  these  same  characters  are  again 
found  in  an  eminent  degree.  Whence  it  follows,  that  we  have 
very  legitimately  concluded  from  truth  in  an  intelligent  cause  and 
substance,  from  beauty  in  a  being  supremely  beautiful,  and  from 
a  moral  law  composed  at  once  of  justice  and  charity  in  a  legisla- 
tor supremely  just  and  supremely  good. 

And  we  have  not  made  a  geometrical  and  algebraical  theodi- 
cea,  after  the  example  of  many  philosophers,  and  the  most  illus- 
trious. We  have  not  deduced  the  attributes  of  God  from  each 
other,  as  the  different  terms  of  an  equation  are  converted,  or  as 
from  one  property  of  a  triangle  the  other  properties  are  deduced, 


RESUME    OF   DOCTRINE.  363 

thus  ending  at  a  God  wholly  abstract,  good  perhaps  for  the 
schools,  but  not  sufficient  for  the  human  race.  We  have  given 
to  theodicea  a  surer  foundation — psychology.  Our  God  is  doubt- 
less also  the  author  of  the  world,  but  he  is  especially  the  father  of 
humanity ;  his  intelligence  is  ours,  with  the  necessity  of  essence 
and  infinite  power  added.  So  our  justice  and  our  charity,  related 
to  their  immortal  exemplar,  give  us  an  idea  of  the  divine  justice 
and  charity.  Therein  we  see  a  real  God,  with  whom  we  can  sus- 
tain a  relation  also  real,  whom  we  can  comprehend  and  feel,  and 
who  in  his  turn  can  comprehend  and  feel  our  efforts,  our  suffer- 
ings, our  virtues,  our  miseries.  Made  in  his  image,  conducted  to 
him  by  a  ray  of  his  own  being,  there  is  between  him  and  us  a 
living  and  sacred  tie. 

Our  theodicea  is  therefore  free  at  once  from  hypothesis  and  ab- 
straction. By  preserving  ourselves  from  the  one,  we  have  pre- 
served ourselves  from  the  other.  Consenting  to  recognize  God 
only  in  his  signs  visible  to  the  eyes  and  intelligible  to  the  mind, 
it  is  on  infallible  evidence  that  we  have  elevated  ourselves  to 
God.  By  a  necessary  consequence,  setting  out  from  real  effects 
and  real  attributes,  we  have  arrived  at  a  real  cause  and  a  real 
substance,  at  a  cause  having  in  power  all  its  essential  effects,  at  a 
substance  rich  in  attributes.  I  wonder  at  the  folly  of  those  who, 
in  order  to  know  God  better,  consider  him,  they  say,  in  his  pure 
and  absolute  essence,  disengaged  from  all  limitative  determina- 
tion. I  believe  that  I  have  forever  removed  the  root  of  such  an 
extravagance.1  No  ;  it  is  not  true  that  the  diversity  of  determi- 
nations, and,  consequently,  of  qualities  and  attributes,  destroys 
the  absolute  unity  of  a  being ;  the  infallible  proof  of  it  is  that  my 
unity  is  not  the  least  in  the  world  altered  by  the  diversity  of  my 
faculties.  '  It  is  not  true  that  unity  excludes  multiplicity,  and 
multiplicity  unity ;  for  unity  and  multiplicity  are  united  in  me. 
Why  then  should  they  not  be  in  God?  Moreover,  far  from 
altering  unity  in  me,  multiplicity  develops  it  and  makes  its  pro- 

1  See  particularly  lecture  5. 


364:  LECTURE   SEVENTEENTH. 

ductiveness  appear.  So  the  richness  of  the  determinations  and 
the  attributes  of  God  is  exactly  the  sign  of  the  plenitude  of  his 
being.  To  neglect  his  attributes,  is  therefore  to  impoverish  him  ; 
we  do  not  say  enough,  it  is  to  annihilate  him, — for  a  being  with- 
out attributes  exists  not ;  and  the  abstraction  of  being,  human  or 
divine,  finite  or  infinite,  relative  or  absolute,  is  nonentity. 

Theodicea  has  two  rocks, — one,  which  we  have  just  signalized 
to  you,  is  abstraction,  the  abuse  of  dialectics ;  it  is  the  vice  of  the 
schools  and  metaphysics.  If  we  are  forced  to  shun  this  rock,  we 
run  the  risk  of  being  dashed  against  the  opposite  rock,  I  mean 
that  fear  of  reasoning  that  extends  to  reason,  that  excessive  pre- 
dominance of  sentiment,  which  developing  in  us  the  loving  and 
affectionate  faculties  at  the  expense  of  all  the  others,  throws  us 
into  anthropomorphism  without  criticism,  and  makes  us  institute 
with  God  an  intimate  and  familiar  intercourse  in  which  we  are 
somewhat  too  forgetful  of  the  august  and  fearful  majesty  of  the 
divine  being.  The  tender  and  contemplative  soul  can  neither 
love  nor  contemplate  in  God  the  necessity,  the  eternity,  the  infi- 
nity, that  do  not  come  within  the  sphere  of  imagination  and  the 
heart,  that  are  only  conceived.  It  therefore  neglects  them. 
Neither  does  it  study  God  in  truth  of  every  kind,  in  physics, 
metaphysics,  and  ethics,  which  manifest  him ;  it  considers  in  him 
particularly  the  characters  to  which  affection  is  attached.  In 
adoration,  Fenelon  retrenches  all  fear  that  nothing  but  love  may 
subsist,  and  Mme.  Guyon  ends  by  loving  God  as  a  lover. 

We  escape  these  opposite  excesses  of  a  refined  sentimentality 
and  a  chimerical  abstraction,  by  always  keeping  in  mind  both  the 
nature  of  God,  by  which  he  escapes  all  relation  with  us, — neces- 
sity, eternity,  infinity,  and  at  the  same  time  those  of  his  attributes 
which  are  our  own  attributes  transferred  to  him,  for  the  very 
simple  reason  that  they  came  from  him. 

I  am  able  to  conceive  God  only  in  his  manifestations  and  by 
the  signs  which  he  gives  of  his  existence,  as  I  am  able  to  con- 
ceive any  being  only  by  the  attributes  of  that  being,  a  cause  only 
by  its  effects,  as  I  am  able  to  conceive  myself  only  by  the  exer 


RESUMES   OF  DOCTKINE.  365 

cise  of  my  faculties.  Take  away  my  faculties  and  the  conscious- 
ness that  attests  them  to  me,  and  I  am  not  for  myself.  It  is  the 
same  with  God, — take  away  nature  and  the  soul,  and  every  sign 
of  God  disappears.  It  is  therefore  in  nature  and  the  soul  that  he 
must  be  sought  and  found. 

The  universe,  which  comprises  nature  and  man,  manifests.  God. 
Is  this  saying  that  it  exhausts  God  ?  By  no  means.  Let  us 
always  consult  psychology.  I  know  myself  only  by  my  acts ; 
that  is  certain  ;  and  what  is  not  less  certain  is,  that  all  my  acts 
do  not  exhaust,  do  not  equal  my  power  and  my  substance ;  for 
my  power,  at  least  that  of  my  will,  can  always  add  an  act  to  all 
those  which  it  has  already  produced,  and  it  has  the  conscious- 
ness, at  the  same  time  that  it  is  exercised,  of  containing  in  itself 
something  to  be  exercised  still.  Of  God  and  the  world  must  be 
said  two  things  in  appearance  contrary, — we  know  God  only  by 
the  world,  and  God  is  essentially  distinct  and  different  from  the 
world.  The  first  cause,  like  all  secondary  causes,  manifests  itself 
only  by  its  effects ;  it  can  even  be  conceived  only  by  them,  and  it 
surpasses  them  by  all  of  the  difference  between  the  Qreator  and 
the  created,  the  perfect  and  the  imperfect.  The  world  is  indefi- 
nite ;  it  is  not  infinite ;  for,  whatever  may  be  its  quantity, 
thought  can  always  add  to  it.  To'  the  myriads  of  worlds  that 
compose  the  totality  of  the  world,  may  be  added  new  worlds. 
But  God  is  infinite,  absolutely  infinite  in  his  essence,  and  an  in- 
definite series  cannot  equal  the  infinite ;  for  the  indefinite  is 
nothing  else  than  the  finite  more  or  less  multiplied  and  capable 
of  continuous  multiplication.  The  world  is  a  whole  which  has 
its  harmony ;  for  a  God  could  make  only  a  complete  and  har- 
monious work.  The  harmony  of  the  world  corresponds  to  the 
unity  of  God,  as  indefinite  quantity  is  a  defective  sign  of  the  in- 
finity of  God.  To  say  that  the  world  is  God,  is  to  admit  only 
the  world  and  deny  God.  Give  to  this  whatever  name  you 
please,  it  is  at  bottom  atheism.  On  the  one  hand,  to  suppose 
that  the  world  is  void  of  God,  and  that  God  is  separate  from  the 
world,  is  an  insupportable  and  almost  impossible  abstraction. 


366  LECTURE  SEVENTEENTH. 

To  distinguish  is  not  to  separate.  I  distinguish  myself,  but  do 
not  separate  myself  from  my  qualities  and  my  acts.  So  God  is 
not  the  world,  although  he  is  in  it  everywhere  present  in  spirit 
and  in  truth.1 


1  We  place  here  this  analogous  passage  on  the  true  measure  in  which  it 
may  be  said  that  God  is  at  once  comprehensible  and  incomprehensible,  1st 
Series,  vol.  iv.,  lecture  12,  p.  12 :  "  We  say  in  the  first  place  that  God  is 
not  absolutely  incomprehensible,  for  this  manifest  reason,  that,  being  the 
cause  of  this  universe,  he  passes  into  it,  and  is  reflected  in  it,  as  the  cause  in 
the  effect ;  therefore  we  recognize  him.  '  The  heavens  declare  his  glory,' 
and  '  the  invisible  things  of  him  from  the  creation  of  the  world  are  clearly 
eeen,  being  understood  by  the  things  that  are  made ;'  his  power,  in  the 
thousands  of  worlds  sown  in  the  boundless  regions  of  space ;  his  intelligence 
in  their  harmonious  laws ;  finally,  that  which  there  is  in  him  most  august, 
in  the  sentiments  of  virtue,  of  holiness,  and  of  love,  which  the  heart  of  man 
contains.  It  must  be  that  God  is  not  incomprehensible  to  us,  for  all  nations 
have  petitioned  him,  since  the  first  day  of  the  intellectual  life  of  humanity. 
God,  then,  as  the  cause  of  the  universe,  reveals  himself  to  us ;  but  God  is 
not  only  the  cause  of  the  universe,  he  is  also  the  perfect  and  infinite  cause, 
possessing  in  himself,  not  a  relative  perfection,  which  is  only  a  degree  of  im- 
perfection, but  an  absolute  perfection,  an  infinity  which  is  not  only  the  finite 
multiplied  by  itself  in  those  proportions  which  the  human  mind  is  able 
always  to  enumerate,  but  a  true  infinity,  that  is,  the  absolute  negation  of  all 
limits,  in  all  the  powers  of  his  being.  Moreover,  it  is  not  true  that  an  indefi- 
nite effect  adequately  expresses  an  infinite  cause ;  hence  it  is  not  true  that 
we  are  able  absolutely  to  comprehend  God  by  the  world  and  by  man,  for  all 
of  God  is  not  in  them.  In  order  absolutely  to  comprehend  the  infinite,  it  is 
necessary  to  have  an  infinite  power  of  comprehension,  and  that  is  not  granted 
to  us.  God,  in  manifesting  himself,  retains  something  in  himself  which 
nothing  finite  can  absolutely  manifest ;  consequently,  it  is  not  permitted  us 
to  comprehend  absolutely.  There  remains,  then,  in  God,  beyond  the  uni- 
verse and  man,  something  unknown,  impenetrable,  incomprehensible. 
Hence  in  the  immeasurable  spaces  of  the  universe,  and  beneath  all  the  pro- 
fundities of  the  human  soul,  God  escapes  us  in  that  inexhaustible  infinitude, 
whence  he  is  able  to  draw  without  limit  new  worlds,  new  beings,  new  mani- 
festations. God  is  to  us,  therefore,  incomprehensible ;  but  even  of  this  in- 
comprehensibility we  have  a  clear  and  precise  idea ;  for  we  have  the  most 
precise  idea  of  infinity.  And  this  idea  is  not  in  us  a  metaphysical  refine- 
ment, it  is  a  simple  and  primitive  conception  which  enlightens  us  from  our 
entrance  into  this  world,  both  luminous  and  obscure,  explaining  every  thing, 
and  being  explained  by  nothing,  because  it  carries  us  at  first  to  the  summit 
and  the  limit  of  all  explanation.  There  is  something  inexplicable  for 
thought, — behold  then  whither  thought  tends ;  there  is  infinite  being, — 
behold  then  the  necessary  principle  of  all  relative  and  finite  beings.  Eeason 
explains  not  the  inexplicable,  it  conceives  it.  It  is  not  able  to  comprehend 
infinity  in  an  absolute  manner,  but  it  comprehends  it  in  some  degree  in  its 


RESUME    OF   DOCTRINE.  367 

Such  is  our  theodicea :  it  rejects  the  excesses  of  all  systems» 
and  contains,  we  believe  at  least,  all  that  is  good  in  them.  From 
sentiment  it  borrows  a  personal  God  as  we  ourselves  are  a  per- 
son, and  from  reason  a  necessary,  eternal,  infinite  God.  In  the 
presence  of  two  opposite  systems, — one  of  which,  in  order  to  see 
and  feel  God  in  the  world,  absorbs  him  in  it ;  the  other  of  which, 
in  order  not  to  confound  God  with  the  world,  separates  him  from 
it  and  relegates  him  to  an  inaccessible  solitude, — it  gives  to  both 
just  satisfaction  by  offering  to  them  a  God  who  is  in  fact  in  the 
world,  since  the  world  is  his  work,  but  without  his  essence  being 
exhausted  in  it,  a  God  who  is  both  absolute  unity  and  unity  mul- 
tiplied, infinite  and  living,  immutable  and  the  principle  of  move- 
ment, supreme  intelligence  and  supreme  truth,  sovereign  justice 
and  sovereign  goodness,  before  whom  the  world  and  man  are 
like  nonentity,  who,  nevertheless,  is  pleased  with,  the  world  and 
man,  substance  eternal,  and  cause  inexhaustible,  impenetrable, 
and  everywhere  perceptible,  who  must  by  turns  be  sought  in 
truth,  admired  in  beauty,  imitated,  even  at  an  infinite  distance, 
in  goodness  and  justice,  venerated  and  loved,  continually  studied 
with  an  indefatigable  zeal,  and  in  silence  adored. 

Let  us  sum  up  this  resume.  Setting  out  from  the  observation 
of  ourselves  in  order  to  preserve  ourselves  from  hypothesis,  we 
have  found  in  consciousness  three  orders  of  facts.  We  have  left 
to  each  of  them  its  character,  its  rank,  its  bearing,  and  its  limits. 
Sensation  has  appeared  to  us  the  indispensable  condition,  but  not 


indefinite  manifestations,  which  reveal  it,  and  which  veil  it ;  and.  further, 
as  it  has  been  said,  it  comprehends  it  so  far  as  incomprehensible.  It  is, 
therefore,  an  equal  error  to  call  God  absolutely  comprehensible,  and  abso- 
lutely incomprehensible.  He  is  both  invisible  and  present,  revealed  and 
withdrawn  in  himself,  in  the  world  and  out  of  the  world,  so  familiar  and  in- 
timate with  his  creatures,  that  we  see  him  by  opening  our  eyes,  that  we  feel 
him  in  feeling  our  hearts  beat,  and  at  the  same  time  inaccessible  in  his  im- 
penetrable majesty,  mingled  with  every  thing,  and  separated  from  every 
thing,  manifesting  himself  in  universal  life,  and  causing  scarcely  an  ephem- 
eral shadow  of  his  eternal  essence  to  appear  there,  communicating  himself 
without  cessation,  and  remaining  incommunicable,  at  once  the  living  God, 
and  the  God  concealed,  '•Deus  vivus  et  Deus  obsionditua.'1  " 


368  LECTURE  SEVENTEENTH. 

the  foundation  of  knowledge.  Reason  is  the  faculty  itself  of 
knowing ;  it  has  furnished  us  with  absolute  principles,  and  these 
absolute  principles  have  conducted  us  to  absolute  truths.  Senti- 
ment, which  pertains  at  once  to  sensation  and  reason,  has  found 
a  place  between  both.  Setting  out  from  consciousness,  but 
always  guided  by  it,  we  have  penetrated  into  the  region  of  being ; 
we  have  gone  quite  naturally  from  knowledge  to  its  objects  by 
the  road  that  the  human  race  pursues,  that  Kant  sought  in  vain, 
or  rather  misconceived  at  pleasure,  to  wit,  that  reason  which 
must  be  admitted  entire  or  rejected  entire,  which  reveals  to  us 
existences  as  well  as  truths.  Therefore,  after  having  recalled  all 
the  great  metaphysical,  sesthetical,  and  moral  truths,  we  have  re- 
ferred them  to  their  principle ;  with  the  human  race  we  have 
pronounced  the  name  of  God,  who  explains  all  things,  because  he 
has  made  all  things,  whom  all  our  faculties  require, — reason,  the 
heart,  the  senses,  since  he  is  the  author  of  all  our  faculties. 

This  doctrine  is  so  simple,  is  to  such  an  extent  in  all  our 
powers,  is  so  conformed  to  all  our  instincts,  that  it  scarcely  ap- 
pears a  philosophic  doctrine,  and,  at  the  same  time,  if  you  ex- 
amine it  more  closely,  if  you  compare  it  with  all  celebrated  doc- 
trines, you  will  find  that  it  is  related  to  them  and  differs  from 
them,  that  it  is  none  of  them  and  embraces  them  all,  that  it  ex- 
presses precisely  the  side  of  them  that  has  made  them  live  and 
sustains  them  in  history.  But  that  is  only  the  scientific  character 
of  the  doctrine  which  we  present  to  you;  it  has  still  another  char- 
acter which  distinguishes  it  and  recommends  it  to  you  much 
more.  The  spirit  that  animates  it  is  that  which  of  old  inspired 
Socrates,  Plato,  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  which  makes  your  hearts 
beat  when  you  are  reading  Corneille  and  Bossuet,  which  dictated 
to  Vauvenargues  the  few  pages  that  have  immortalized  his  name, 
which  you  feel  especially  in  Reid,  sustained  by  an  admirable  good 
sense,  and  even  in  Kant,  in  the  midst  of,  and  superior  to  the  em- 
barrassments of  his  metaphysics,  to  wit,  the  taste  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  good  in  all  things,  the  passionate  love  of  honesty,  the 
ardent  desire  of  the  moral  grandeur  of  humanity.  Yes,  wo  do 


RESUME   OF  DOCTRINE.  369 

not  fear  to  repeat  that  we  tend  thither  by  all  our  views ;  it  is  the 
end  to  which  are  related  all  the-.parts  of  our  instruction ;  it  is  the 
thought  which  serves  as  their  connection,  and  is,  thus  to  speak, 
their  soul.  May  this  thought  be  always  present  to  you,  and  ac- 
company you  as  a  faithful  and  generous  friend,  wherever  fortune 
shall  lead  you,  under  the  tent  of  the  soldier,  in  the  office  of  the 
lawyer,  of  the  physician,  of  the  savant,  in  the  study  of  the  literary 
man,  as  well  as  in  the  studio  of  the  artist!  Finally,  may  it 
sometimes  remind  you  of  him  who  has  been  to  you  its  very  sin- 
cere but  too  feeble  interpreter ! 

16* 


APPENDIX. 


PAGE  188 :  "  What  a  destiny  was  that  of  Eustache  Lesueur  I" 
It  is  perceived  that  we  have  followed,  as  regards  his  death,  the  tra- 
dition, or  rather  the  prejudices  current  at  the  present  day,  and  which 
have  misled  the  best  judges  before  us.  But  there  have  appeared  in  a 
recent  and  interesting  publication,  called  Archives  de  I1  Art  fran$ais, 
vol.  iii.,  certain  incontrovertible  documents,  never  before  published, 
on  the  life  and  works  of  the  painter  of  St.  Bruno,  which  compel  us 
to  withdraw  certain  assertions  agreeable  to  general  opinion,  but  con- 
trary to  truth.  The  notice  of  Lesueur's  death,  extracted  for  the  first 
time  from  the  Register  of  Deaths  of  the  parish  church  of  Saint-Louis 
in  the  isle  of  Notre-Dame,  preserved  amongst  the  archives  of  the 
Hotel  de  Ville  at  Paris,  clearly  prove  that  he  did  not  die  at  the  Char- 
treux,  but  in  the  isle  of  Notre-Datne,  where  he  dwelt,  in  the  parish 
of  St.  Louis,  and  that  he  was  buried  in  the  church  of  Saint-Etienne 
du  Mont,  the  resting-place  of  Pascal  and  Racine.  It  appears  also  that 
Lesueur  died  before  his  wife,  Genevieve  Gousse,  since  the  Register  of 
Births  of  the  parish  of  Saint-Louis,  contains  under  the  date  18th 
February,  1655,  a  notice  of  the  baptism  of  a  fourth  child  of  Lesueur. 
Now,  Genevieve  Gousse  must  have  deceased  almost  immediately 
after  her  confinement,  supposing  her  to  have  died  before  her  hus- 
band's decease,  which  occurred  on  the  1st  of  the  following  May.  If 
this  were  the  case,  we  should  have  found  a  notice  of  her  death  in  the 
Register  of  Deaths  for  the  year  1655,  as  we  do  that  of  her  husband. 
Such  a  notice,  however,  which  could  alone  disprove  the  probability, 
and  authenticate  the  vulgar  opinion,  is  nowhere  to  be  found  amongst 
the  archives  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  at  least  the  author  of  the  Nouvellet 
Recherches  has  nowhere  been  able  to  meet  with  it. 


372  APPENDIX. 

In  the  other  particulars  our  rapid  sketch  of  Lesueur's  history  re- 
mains untouched.  He  never  was  in  Italy ;  and  according  to  the 
account  of  Guillet  de  Saint-Georges,  which  has  so  long  remained  in 
manuscript,  he  never  desired  to  go  there.  He  was  poor,  discreet, 
and  pious,  tenderly  loved  his  wife,  and  lived  in  the  closest  union  with 
his  three  brothers  and  hrother-in-law,  who  were  all  pupils  and  fellow- 
laborers  of  his.  It  appears  to  be  a  refinement  of  criticism  which  de- 
nies the  current  belief  of  an  acquaintance  between  Lesueur  and  Pous- 
sin.  If  no  document  authenticates  it,  at  all  events  it  is  not  contra- 
dicted by  any,  and  appears  to  us  to  be  highly  probable. 

Every  one  admits  that  Lesueur  studied  and  admired  Poussin.  It 
would  certainly  be  strange  if  he  did  not  seek  his  acquaintance,  which 
he  could  have  obtained  without  difficulty,  since  Poussin  was  staying 
at  Paris  from  1640  to  1642.  It  would  be  difficult  for  them  not  to 
have  met.  After  Vouet's  death  in  1641,  Lesueur  acquired  more  and 
more  a  peculiar  style ;  and  in  1642,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  entirely 
unshackled,  and  with  a  taste  ripe  for  the  antique  and  Raphael,  he 
must  frequently  have  been  at  the  Louvre,  where  Poussin  resided. 
Thus  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  they  frequently  saw  each  other  and 
became  acquainted,  and  with  their  sympathies  of  character  and  tal- 
ent, acquaintance  must  have  resulted  in  esteem  and  love.  If  Pous- 
sin's  letters  do  not  mention  Lesueur,  we  would  remark  that  neither  do 
they  mention  Champagne,  whose  connection  with  Poussin  is  not  dis- 
puted. The  argument  built  on  the  silence  of  Guillet  de  Saint- Georges' 
account  is  far  from  convincing ;  inasmuch  as  being  intended  to  bo 
read  before  a  Sitting  of  the  Academy,  it  could  only  contain  a  notice 
of  the  great  artist's  career,  without  those  biographical  details  in  which 
his  friendships  would  be  mentioned.  Lastly,  it  is  impossible  to  deny 
Poussin's  influence  upon  Lesueur,  which  it  seems  to  us  at  least  prob- 
able was  as  much  due  to  his  counsels  as  to  his  example. 

Page  190:  "But  the  marvel  of  the  picture  is  the  figure  of  St. 
Paul." 

We  have  recently  seen,  at  Hampton  Court,  the  seven  cartoons  of 
Raphael,  which  should  not  be  looked  at,  still  less  criticised,  but  on 
bended  kn.ee.  Behold  Raphael  arrived  at  the  summit  of  his  art,  and 
in  the  last  years  of  life !  And  these  were  but  drawings  for  tapes- 
try !  These  drawings  alone  would  reward  the  journey  to  England, 
even  were  the  figures  from  the  friezes  of  the  Parthenon  not  at  the 
British  Museum.  One  never  tires  of  contemplating  these  grand  per- 


APPENDIX.  373 

formances  even  in  the  obscurity  of  that  ill-lighted  room.  Nothing 
could  be  more  noble,  more  magnificent,  more  imposing,  more  majes- 
tic. What  draperies,  what  attitudes,  what  forms !  Notwithstanding 
the  absence  of  color,  the  effect  is  immense ;  the  mind  is  struck,  at 
once  charmed  and  transported ;  but  the  soul,  we  can  speak  for  our- 
selves, remains  well-nigh  insensible.  We  request  any  one  to  .compare 
carefully  the  sixth  cartoon,  clearly  one  of  the  finest,  representing  the 
Preaching  of  St.  Paul  at  Ephesus,  with  the  painting  we  have  de- 
scribed of  Lesueur's.  One,  immediately  and  at  the  first  sight,  trans- 
ports you  into  the  regions  of  the  ideal ;  the  other  is  less  striking  at 
first,  but  stay,  consider  it  well,  study  it  in  detail,  then  take  in  the 
whole :  by  degrees  you  are  overcome  by  an  ever-increasing  emotion. 
Above  all,  examine  in  both  the  principal  character,  St.  Paul.  Here, 
you  behold  the  fine  long  folds  of  a  superb  robe  which  at  once  envel- 
ops and  sets  off  his  height,  whilst  the  figure  is  in  shade,  and  the  little 
you  see  of  it  has  nothing  striking.  There  he  confronts  you,  inspired, 
terrible,  majestic.  Now  say  which  side  lays  claim  to  moral  effect. 

Page  193:  "The  great  works  of  Lesueur,  Poussin,  and  so  many 
others  scattered  over  Europe." 

Of  all  the  paintings  of  Lesueur  which  are  in  England,  that  which 
we  regret  most  not  having  seen  is  Alexander  and  his  Physician, 
painted  for  M.  de  Nouveau,  director-general  of  the  Pastes,  which 
passed  from  the  Hotel  Nouveau  to  the  Place  Eoyale  in  the  Orleans 
Gallery,  from  thence  into  England,  where  it  was  bought  by  Lady 
Lucas  at  the  great  London  sale  in  1800.  The  sale  catalogue,  with 
the  prices  and  names  of  the  purchasers,  will  be  found  at  the  end  of 
vol.  i.  of  M.  Waagen's  excellent  work,  (Euvres  (VArt  et  Artistes  en 
Angleterre,  2  vols.,  Berlin,  1837  and  1838. 

We  were  both  consoled  and  agreeably  surprised  on  our  return,  to 
meet,  in  the  valuable  gallery  of  M.  le  Comte  d'Houdetot,  an  ancient 
peer  of  France,  and  free  member  of  the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  with 
another  Alexander  and  his  physician  Philip,  in  which  the  hand  of 
Lesueur  cannot  be  mistaken.  The  composition  of  the  entire  piece  is 
perfect.  The  drawing  is  exquisite.  The  amplitude  and  nobleness  of 
the  draperies  recall  those  of  Raphael.  The  form  of  Alexander  fine 
and  languid ;  the  person  of  Philip  the  physician  grave  and  imposing. 
The  coloring,  though  not  powerful,  is  finely  blended  in  tone.  Now, 
where  is  the  true  original,  is  it  with  M.  Houdetot  or  in  England  ? 
The  painting  sold  in  London  in  1800  certainly  came  from  the  Orleans' 


374:  APPENDIX. 

gallery,  which  would  seem  most  likely  to  have  possessed  the  original. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  impossible  M.  Houdetot's  picture  is  a  copy. 
They  must,  therefore,  both  be  equally  the  work  of  Lesueur,  who  has 
in  this  instance  treated  the  same  subject  twice  over,  as  he  has  like- 
wise done  the  Preaching  of  St.  Paul;  of  which  there  is  another, 
smaller  than  that  at  the  Louvre,  but  equally  admirable,  at  the  Place 
Royale,  belonging  to  M.  Girou  de  Buzariengues,  corresponding  mem- 
ber of  the  Academy  of  Sciences.1 

We  borrow  M.  Waagen's  description  of  the  works  of  Lesueur,  found 
by  that  eminent  critic  in  the  English  collections:  The  Queen  of 
Sheba  before  Solomon,  the  property  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  vol. 
L,  p.  245.  Christ  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross  supported  ty  his  Family, 
belonging  to  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury,  vol.  ii.,  p.  463,  "  the  sentiment 
deep  and  truthful,"  remarks  M.  Waagen.  The  Magdalen  pouring 
the  ointment  on  the  feet  of  Jesus,  the  property  of  Lord  Exeter,  vol. 
ii.,  p.  485,  "a  picture  full  of  the  purest  sentiment;"  lastly,  in  the 
possession  of  M.  Miles,  a  Death  of  Germanicus,  "a  rich  and  noble 
composition,  completely  in  Poussin's  style,"  remarks  M.  Waagen, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  356.  Let  us  add  that  this  last  work  is  not  met  with  in  any 
catalogue,  ancient  or  modern.  We  ask  ourselves  whether  this  may 
not  be  a  copy  of  the  Germanicus  of  Poussin  attributed  to  Lesueur. 

The  author  of  Musees  cPAllemange  et  du  Bussie  (Paris,  1844)  men- 
tions at  Berlin  a  Saint  Bruno  adoring  the  Cross  in  his  Cell,  opening 
upon  a  landscape,  and  pretends  that  this  picture  is  as  pathetic  as  the 
best  Saint  Brunos  in  the  Museum  at  Paris.  It  is  probably  a  sketch, 
like  the  one  we  have,  or  one  of  the  wanting  panels ;  for  as  for  the 
pictures  themselves,  there  were  never  more  than  twenty-two  at  the 
Chartreux,  and  these  are  at  the  Louvre.  Perhaps,  however,  it  may 
be  the  picture  which  Lesueur  made  for  M.  Bernard  de  Roze,  see  Flo- 
rent  Lecomte,  vol.  iii.,  p.  98,  which  represented  a  Carthusian  in  a 
cell.  At  St.  Petersburg,  the  catalogue  of  the  Hermitage  mentions 
seven  pictures  of  Lesueur,  one  of  which,  The  infant  Moses  exposed  on 
the  Nile,  is  admitted  by  the  author  cited  to  be  authentic.  Can  this 
be  one  of  two  Moses  which  were  painted  by  Lesueur  for  M.  de  Non- 
veau,  as  we  learn  from  Guillet  de  Saint-Georges  ?  Unless  M.  Viardot 
is  deceived,  and  mistakes  a  copy  for  an  original,  we  must  regret  that 


1  This  is  the  sketch  which  Felibien  so  justly  praises,  part  v.,  p.  37,  of  the 
1st  edition,  in  4to. 


LESUEUR.  375 

a  real  Lesueur  should  have  been  suffered  to  stray  to  St.  Petersburg, 
with  many  of  Poussin's  most  beautiful  Claudes  (see  p.  474),  Mignards, 
Sebastian  Bourdons,  Gaspars,  Stellas,  and  Valentins. 

Some  years  ago,  at  the  sale  of  Cardinal  Fesch's  gallery,  we  might 
have  acquired  one  of  Lesueur's  finest  pieces,  executed  for  the  church 
of  Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois,  which  had  got,  by  some  chance,  into 
the  possession  of  Chancellor  Pontchartrain,  afterwards  into  that  of 
the  Emperor's  uncle.  This  celebrated  picture,  Christ  with  Martha 
and  Mary,  formed  at  Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois,  a  pendent  to  the 
Martyrdom  of  St.  Lawrence.  Will  it  be  believed  that  the  French 
Government  lost  the  opportunity,  and  permitted  this  little  chef- 
d'ceuvre  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  King  of  Bavaria  ?  A  good  copy 
at  Marseilles  was  thought,  doubtless,  sufficient,  and  the  original  was 
left  to  find  its  way  to  the  gallery  at  Munich,  and  meet  again  the  /St. 
Louis  on  his  Icnees  at  Mass,  which  the  catalogue  of  that  gallery  attrib- 
utes to  Lesueur,  on  what  ground  we  are  not  aware.  In  conclusion, 
we  may  mention  that  there  is  in  the  Museum  at  Brussels,  a  charming 
little  Lesueur,  The  /Saviour  giving  his  Blessing,  and  in  the  Museums 
of  Grenoble  and  Montpelier  several  fragments  of  the  History  of 
Tolias,  painted  for  M.  de  Fieubet. 

Page  193  :  "  Those  master-pieces  of  art  that  honor  the  nation  de- 
part without  authorization  from  the  national  territory !  There  has 
not  been  found  a  government  which  has  undertaken  at  least  to  repur- 
chase those  that  we  have  lost,  to  get  back  again  the  great  works  of 
Poussin,  Lesueur,  and  so  many  others,  scattered  in  Europe,  instead 
of  squandering  millions  to  acquire  the  baboons  of  Holland,  as  Louis 
XIV.  said,  or  Spanish  canvases,  in  truth  of  an  admirable  color,  but 
without  nobleness  and  moral  expression." 

Shall  we  give  a  recent  instance  of  the  small  value  we  appear  to  set 
on  Poussin  ?  We  blush  to  think  that  in  1848  we  should  have  permit- 
ted the  noble  collection  of  M.  de  Montcalm  to  pass  into  England. 
One  picture  escaped :  it  was  put  up  to  sale  in  Paris  on  the  5th  of 
March,  1850.  It  was  a  charming  Poussin,  undoubtedly  authentic, 
from  the  Orleans  gallery,  and  described  at  length  in  the  catalogue  of 
Dubois  de  Saint-Gelais.  It  represented  the  Birth  of  Bacchus,  and 
by  its  variety  of  scenes  and  multitude  of  ideas,  showed  it  belonged  to 
Poussin's  best  period.  We  must  do  Normandy,  rather  the  city  of 
Rouen,  the  justice  to  say,  that  it  made  an  effort  to  acquire  it,  but 
it  was  unsupported  by  Government ;  and  this  composition,  wholly 


376  APPENDIX. 

French,  was  sold  at  Paris  for  the  sum  of  17,000  francs,  to  a  foreigner. 
Mr.  Hope. 

Miserable  contrast !  while  five  or  six  hundred  thousand  francs  have 
been  given  for  a  Virgin  by  Murillo,  which  is  now  turning  the  heads 
of  all  who  behold  it.  I  confess  that  mine  has  entirely  resisted.  I 
admire  the  freshness,  the  sweetness,  the  harmony  of  color ;  but  ever}* 
other  superior  quality  which  one  looks  to  find  in  such  a  subject  is 
wanting,  or  at  least  escaped  me.  Ecstasy  never  transfigured  that 
face,  which  is  neither  noble  nor  great.  The  lovely  infant  before  me 
does  not  seem  sensible  of  the  profound  mystery  accomplished  in  her. 
What,  then,  can  there  be  in  this  vaunted  Virgin  which  so  catches  the 
multitude  ?  She  is  supported  by  beautiful  angels,  in  a  fine  dress,  of 
a  charming  color,  the  effect  of  all  Avhich  is  doubtless  highly  pleasant. 

Page  195 :  "  "We  endeavor  to  console  ourselves  for  having  lost  the 
Seven  Sacraments,  and  for  not  having  known  how  to  keep  from  Eng- 
land and  Germany  so  many  productions  of  Poussin,  now  buried  in 
foreign  collections,"  etc. 

After  having  expressed  our  regret  that  we  were  unacquainted  with 
the  Seven  Sacraments  save  from  the  engravings  of  Pesne,  we  made 
a  journey  to  London,  to  see  with  our  own  eyes,  and  judge  for  our- 
selves these  famous  pictures,  with  many  others  of  our  great  country- 
man, now  fallen  into  the  possession  of  England,  through  our  culpable 
indifference,  and  which  have  been  brought  under  our  notice  by  M. 
Waagen. 

In  the  few  days  we  were  able  to  dedicate  to  this  little  journey,  we 
had  to  examine  four  galleries :  the  National  Gallery,  answering  to 
our  Museum,  those  of  Lord  Ellesmere  and  the  Marquis  of  West- 
minster, and,  at  some  miles  from  London,  the  collection  at  Dulwich 
College,  celebrated  in  England,  though  but  little  known  on  the 
continent. 

We  likewise  visited  another  collection,  resulting  from  an  institution 
which  might  easily  be  introduced  into  France,  to  the  decided  advan- 
tage of  art  and  taste.  A  society  has  been  formed  in  England,  called 
the  British  Institution  for  promoting  the  Fine  Arts  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  Every  year  it  has,  in  London,  an  exhibition  of  ancient 
paintings,  to  which  individual  galleries  send  their  choice  pieces,  so 
that  in  a  certain  number  of  years  all  the  most  remarkable  pictures  in 
England  pass  under  the  public  eye.  But  for  this  exhibition,  what 
riches  would  remain  buried  in  the  mansions  of  the  aristocracy  or  un- 


POUSSIN.  377 

known  cabinets  of  provincial  amateurs !  The  society,  having  at  its 
head  the  greatest  names  of  England,  enjoys  a  certain  authority,  and 
all  ranks  respond  eagerly  to  its  appeal. 

We  ourselves  saw  the  list  of  persons  who  this  year  contributed  to 
the  exhibition;  there  were  her  Majesty  the  Queen,  the  Dukes  of 
Bedford,  Devonshire,  Newcastle,  Northumberland,  Sutherland,  the 
Earls  of  Derby  and  Suffolk,  and  numerous  other  great  men,  besides 
bankers,  merchants,  savants,  and  artists.  The  exhibition  is  public, 
but  not  free,  as  you  must  pay  both  for  admission  and  the  printed 
catalogue.  The  money  thus  acquired  is  appropriated  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  the  exhibition ;  whatever  remains  is  employed  in 
the  purchase  of  pictures,  which  are  then  presented  to  the  National 
Gallery. 

At  this  year's  exhibition  we  saw  three  of  Claude  Lorrain's,  which 
well  sustained  the  name  of  that  master.  Apollo  watching  the  Tierd» 
of  Admetus  ;  a  Sea-port,  both  belonging  to  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  and 
Psyche  and  Amor,  the  property  of  Mr.  Perkins ;  a  pretended  Lesueur. 
the.  Death  of  the  Virgin,  from  the  Earl  of  Suffolk ;  seven  Sebastian 
Bourdons,  the  Seven  Works  of  Mercy  ^  lent  by  the  Earl  of  Yarbor- 
ough ;  a  landscape  by  Gaspar  Poussin,  but  not  one  morceau  of  his 
illustrious  brother-in-law's. 

We  were  more  fortunate  in  the  National  Gallery. 

There,  to  begin,  what  admirable  Claudes !  We  counted  as  many 
as  ten,  some  of  them  of  the  highest  value.  We  will  confine  ourselves 
to  the  recapitulation  of  three,  the  Embarkation  of  St.  Ursula,  a  largt; 
landscape,  and  the  Embarkation  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba. 

1st.  The  Embarkation  of  St.  Ursula,  which  was  painted  for  the 
Barberini,  and  adorned  their  palace  at  Eome  until  the  year  1^60, 
when  an  English  amateur  purchased  it  from  the  Princess  Barberini, 
with  other  works  of  the  first  class.  This  picture  is  3  feet  8  inches 
high,  4  feet  11  inches  wide. 

2d.  The  large  landscape  is  4  feet  11  inches  high,  6  feet  7  inches 


*  This  great  work  has  been  long  in  England,  as  remarked  by  Mariette,  see 
the  Abecedario,  just  published,  article  S.  Bourdon,  vol.  i.,  p.  171.  It  appears 
to  have  been  a  favorite  work  of  Bourdon,  he  having  himself  engraved  it,  see 
de  Piles,  Abrege  de  la  Vie  des  Peintres,  2d  edition,  p.  494,  and  the  Peintre 
graveur  franjais,  of  M.  Eobert  Durnesnil,  vol.  i.,  p.  131,  etc.  The  copper- 
plates of  the  Seven  Works  of  Mercy  are  at  the  Louvre.. 


378  APPENDIX. 

wide.  Kebecca  is  seen,  with  her  relatives  and  servants,  waiting  the 
arrival  of  Isaac,  who  comes  from  afar  to  celebrate  their  marriage. 

3d.  The  Embarlcation  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  going  to  visit  Solo- 
mon, formed  a  pendent  to  the  preceding  figure,  which  it  resembles 
in  its  dimensions.  It  is  both  a  sea  and  landscape  drawing.  M. 
Waagen  declares  it  to  be  the  most  beautiful  morceau  of  the  kind  he 
is  acquainted  with,  and  asserts  that  Lorrain  has  here  attained  per- 
fection, vol.  i.,  p.  211.  This  masterpiece  was  executed  by  Claude 
for  his  protector,  the  Duke  de  Bouillon.  It  is  signed  "  Claude  GE. 
I.  V.,  faict  pour  son  Altesse  le  Due  de  Bouillon,  anno  1648."  Doubt- 
less the  great  Duke  de  Bouillon,  eldest  brother  of  Turenne.  This 
French  work,  destined,  too,  for  France,  she  has  now  forever  lost,  as 
well  as  the  famous  Book  of  Truth,  Libro  di  Verita,  in  which  Claude 
collected  the  drawings  of  all  his  paintings,  drawings  which  may  be 
themselves  regarded  as  finished  pictures.  This  invaluable  treasure 
was,  like  the  Embarkation  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  for  a  long  time  in 
the  hands  of  a  French  broker,  who  would  willingly  have  relinquished 
it  to  the  Government,  but  failing  to  find  purchasers  in  Paris  in  the 
last  century,  ultimately  sold  it  for  a  mere  nothing  into  Holland, 
whence  it  has  passed  into  England.1  The  author  of  the  Musees  d'Al- 
lemagne  et  de  Russie,  mentions  that  in  the  gallery  of  the  Hermitage 
at  St.  Petersburg,  amongst  a  large  number  of  Claudes,  whose  authen- 
ticity he  appears  to  admit,  there  are  four  morceaux,  which  he  does 
not  hesitate  to  declare  equal  to  the  most  celebrated  chefs-d'oeuvre  of 
that  master,  in  Paris  or  London,  called  the  Morning,  the  Noon,  the 
Evening,  and  the  Night.  They  are  from  Malinaison.  Thus  the  sale 
of  the  gallery  of  an  empress  has  in  our  own  time  enriched  Eussia,  as, 
twenty-five  years  before,  the  sale  of  the  Orleans  gallery  enriched 
England. 

In  the  National  Gallery,  along  with  the  serene  and  quiet  landscapes 
of  Lorrain,  are  five  of  Gaspar's,  depicting  nature  under  an  opposite 
aspect — rugged  and  wild  localities,  and  tempests.  One  of  the  most 
remarkable  represents  Eneas  and  Dido  seeking  shelter  in  a  grotto 
from  the  violence  of  a  storm.  The  figures  are  from  the  pencil  of 
Albano,  and  for  a  length  of  time  remained  in  the  palace  Falconieri. 


1  The  Libro  di  Verita  is  now  the  property  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire.    M. 
Leon  de  Laborde  has  given  a  detailed  account  of  it  in  the  Archives  de  VArt 
is,  torn,  i.,  p.  435,  et  seq. 


POUSSIN.  379 

Two  other  landscapes  are  from  the  palace  Corsini,  and  two  from  the 
palace  Oolonna. 

But  to  return  to  our  real  subject,  which  is  Poussin.  There  are 
eight  paintings  by  his  hand  in  the  National  Gallery,  all  worthy  of 
mention.  M.  "Waagen  has  merely  spoken  of  them  in  general  terms, 
but  we  shall  proceed  to  give  a  description  in  detail. 

Of  these  eight  paintings,  only  one,  representing  the  plague  of  Ash- 
dod,  is  taken  from  sacred  history.  This  is  described  in  the  printed 
catalogue  as  No.  165.  The  Israelites  having  been  vanquished  by  the 
Philistines,  the  ark  was  taken  by  the  victors  and  placed  in  the  temple 
of  Dagon  at  Ashdod.  The  idol  falls  before  the  ark,  and  the  Philis- 
tines are  smitten  with  the  pestilence.  This  canvas  is  4  feet  3  inches 
high,  and  6  feet  8  inches  wide.  A  sketch  or  copy  of  "the  Plague  of 
the  Philistines  is  in  the  Museum  of  the  Louvre,  and  has  been  en- 
graved by  Picard.  Poussin  was,  in  fact,  fond  of  repeating  a  subject ; 
there  are  two  sets  of  the  Seven  Sacraments,  two  ArcadiasJ  two  or 
three  Moses  striking  the  Bock,  &c.  The  science  of  painting  is  here 
employed  to  portray  the  scene  in  all  its  terrors,  and  display  every 
horror  of  the  pestilence,  and  it  would  seem  that  Poussin  had  here 
endeavored  to  contend  with  Michael  Angelo,  even  at  the  expense  of 
beauty.  It  is  said  the  commission  for  this  work  was  given  by  Cardi- 
nal Barberini.  It  comes  from  the  palace  of  Oolonna.  The  subjects 
of  the  remaining  seven  pictures  in  the  National  Gallery  are  mytho- 
logical, and  may  be  nearly  all  referred  to  the  early  epoch  of  Poussin's 
career,  when  he  paid  tribute  to  the  genius  of  the  16th  century,  and 
yielded  to  the  influence  of  Marini. 

No.  39.  The  Education  of  Bacchus,  a  subject  chosen  by  Poussin 
more  than  once.  On  a  small  canvas  2  feet  3  inches  high,  and  3  feet 
1  inch  wide. 

No.  40.  Another  small  picture  1  foot  6  inches  high,  and  3  feet  4 
inches  broad :  Phocion  washing  his  Feet  at  a  Public  Fountain,  a 
touching  emblem  of  the  purity  and  simplicity  of  his  life.  To  heighten 
this  rustic  scene,  and  impart  its  meaning,  the  painter  shows  us  the 
trophies  of  the  noble  warrior  hung  on  the  trunk  of  a  tree  at  a  little 
distance.  The  whole  composition  is  striking  and  full  of  animation. 


1  The  first  composition  of  Arcadia,  truly  precious  could  it  have  beer 
placed  in  the  Louvre  beside  the  second  and  better  production,  is  in  Eng 
land,  the  property  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire. 


380  APPENDIX. 

We  believe  that  it  has  never  been  engraved.  It  forms  a  happy  addi- 
tion to  the  two  other  compositions  consecrated  by  Poussin  to  Pho- 
cion,  and  which  have  been  so  admirably  engraved  by  Baudet,  Phocion 
carried  out  of  the  City  of  Athens,  and  the  Tomb  of  Phocion. 

No.  42.  Here  is  one  of  the  three  bacchanals  painted  by  Poussin  for 
the  Duke  de  Montmorency.  The  two  others  are  said  to  be  in  the 
collection  of  Lord  Ashburnham.  This  bacchanal  is  4  feet  8  inches- 
high,  and  3  feet  1  inch  wide.  In  a  warm  landscape  Bacchus  is 
sleeping  surrounded  by  nymphs,  satyrs,  and  centaurs,  whilst  Silenus 
appears  under  an  arbor  attended  by  sylvan  figures. 

No.  62.  Another  bacchanal,  which  may  be  considered  one  of  Pous- 
sin's  masterpieces.  According  to  M.  Waagen,  it  belonged  to  the 
Colonna  collection,  but  the  catalogue,  published  ~by  authority,  states 
that  it  was  originally  the  property  of  the  Comte  de  Vaudreueili,  that 
it  afterwards  came  into  the  hands  of  M.  de  Calonne,  whence  it  passed 
into  England,  and  ultimately  found  its  way  into  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Hamlet,  from  whom  it  was  purchased  by  Parliament,  and  placed  iii 
the  National  Gallery.  It  is  3  feet  8  inches  high,  and  4  feet  8  inches 
wide.  Its  subject  is  a  dance  of  fauns  and  bacchantes,  which  is  in- 
terrupted by  a  satyr,  who  attempts  to  take  liberties  with  a  nymph. 
Besides  the  main  subject,  there  are  numerous  spirited  and  graceful 
episodes,  particularly  two  infants  endeavoring  to  catch  in  a  cup  the 
juice  of  a  bunch  of  grapes  supported  in  air,  and  pressed  by  a  bac- 
chante of  slim  and  fine  form.  The  composition  is  full  of  fire,  energy, 
and  spirit.  There  is  not  a  single  group,  not  a  figure,  which  will  not 
repay  an  attentive  study.  M.  Waagen  does  not  hesitate  to  pronounce 
it  one  of  Poussin's  finest.  He  admires  the  truth  and  variety  of  heads, 
the  freshness  of  color,  and  the  transparent  tone  (die  Farbung  von  sel- 
tenster  Frische,  Helle  und  Klarheit  in  alien  Theilen).  It  has  been 
engraved  by  Huart,  and  accurately  copied  by  Landon,  under  the 
title  of  Danse  de  Fauns  ct  de  Bacchantes. 

No.  65.  Cephalus  and  Aurora.  Aurora,  captivated  by  the  beauty 
of  Cephalus,  endeavors  to  separate  him  from  his  wife  Procris.  Being 
unsuccessful,  in  a  fit  of  jealonsy  she  gives  to  Cephalus  the  dart  which 
causes  the  death  of  his  adored  spouse.  3  feet  2  inches  high,  4  feet 
2  inches  wide. 

No.  83.  A  large  painting,  5  feet  6  inches  high,  and  8  feet  wide, 
representing  Phineas  and  his  Companions  changed  into  Stones  by 
looking  on  the  Gorgon.  Perseus,  having  rescued  Andromeda  from 


POUSSIN.  381 

the  sea  monster,  obtains  her  hand  from  her  father  Cepheus,  who 
celebrates  their  nuptials  with  a  magnificent  feast.  Phineas,  to  whom 
Andromeda  had  been  betrothed,  rushes  in  upon  the  festivity  at  the 
head  of  a  troop  of  armed  men.  A  combat  ensues,  in  which  Perseus, 
being  nearly  overcome,  opposes  to  his  enemies  the  head  of  Medusa, 
by  which  they  are  instantly  changed  to  stone.  This  composition  is 
full  of  vigor,  with  brilliant  coloring,  although  somewhat  crude.  It 
is  nowhere  mentioned,  and  we  are  not  aware  of  its  having  been  en- 
graved. 

No.  91.  A  charming  little  drawing,  2  feet  2  inches  high,  1  foot  8 
inches  wide :  A  sleeping  Nymph,  surprised  by  Love  and  Satyrs,  en- 
graved by  Daulle,  also  in  Landon's  work. 

Passing  from  the  National  Gallery  to  that  of  Bridgewater,  we  come 
upon  another  phase  of  Poussin's  genius,  and  encounter  not  the  disci- 
ple of  Marini  but  the  disciple  of  the  gospel,  the  graces  of  mythology 
giving  way  to  the  austerity  and  sublimity  of  Christianity.  Such  is 
the  account  of  what  we  came  to  see ;  we  looked  for  much,  and  found 
more  than  we  expected. 

The  Bridgewater  Gallery  is  so  named  after  its  founder,  the  Duke 
of  Bridgewater,  by  whom  it  was  formed  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  He  bequeathed  it  to  his  brother,  the  Marquis  of 
Stafford,  on  the  condition  of  his  leaving  it  to  his  second  son,  Lord 
Francis  Egerton,  now  Lord  Ellesmere.  The  best  part  of  this  collec- 
tion was  engraved  during  the  life  of  the  Marquis  of  Stafford,  by 
Ottley,  under  the  title  of  the  Stafford  Gallery,  in  4  vols.  folio. 

It  occupies  the  first  place  in  England  amongst  private  collections, 
on  account  of  the  number  of  masterpieces  of  the  Italian,  and  Dutch, 
and  French  schools.  A  large  number  of  paintings  were  added  to  it 
from  the  Orleans  Gallery,  and  we  could  not  repress  a  feeling  of  regret 
to  meet  at  Cleveland  Square  with  so  many  masterpieces  formerly  be- 
longing to  France,  and  which  have  been  engraved  in  the  two  cele- 
brated works :  1 .  La  Galerie  du  due  d"1  Orleans  au  Palate-Royal,  2 
volumes  in  folio ;  2.  Recueil  d' 'estampes  d'apres  les  plus  beaux  tableaux 
et  dessins  qui  sont  en  France  dans  le  cabinet  du  roi  et  celui  de  Mon- 
seigneur  le  due  d1  Orleans,  1729,  2  volumes  in  folio;  a  most  valuable 
collection  known  also  under  the  name  of  the  Cabinet  of  Crozat. 
This  admirable  collection  is  deposited  in  a  building  worthy  of  it,  in  a 
veritable  palace,  and  consists  of  nearly  300  paintings.  The  French 
school  is  here  well  represented.  The  Musical  Party,  from  the 


382  APPENDIX. 

Orleans  Gallery,  and  engraved  in  the  Galerie  du  Palais- Roy  al ; 
three  Bourguignons,  four  Gaspars,  four  fine  Claudes,  described  by 
M.  Waagen,  vol.  i.,  p.  331,  the  two  former  described  in  the  catalogue 
as  Nos.  11  and  41  were  painted  in  1664  for  M.  de  Bourlemout,  a 
gentleman  of  Lorraine;  the  former,  Demosthenes  T>y  the  Sea-side, 
offers  a  fine  contrast  between  majestic  ruins  and  nature  eternally 
young  and  fresh ;  the  second,  Moses  at  the  Burning  Bush,  a  third, 
No.  103,  of  the  year  1657,  was  likewise  painted  for  a  Frenchman,  M. 
de  Lagarde,  and  represents  the  Metamorphosis  of  Apuleius  into  a 
Shepherd ;  lastly,  there  is  a  fourth,  No.  97,  the  freshest  idyll  that 
ever  was,  a  View  of  the  Cascatelles  of  Tiwli. 

The  memory  of  these  charming  compositions,  however,  soon  fades 
before  the  view  of  the  eight  grand  pictures  of  Poussin,  marked  in  the 
catalogue  Nos.  62—69,  the  Seven  Sacraments,  and  Moses  striking  the 
Bock  with  his  Eod. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  describe  the  religious  sensations  which  took 
possession  of  us  whilst  contemplating  the  Sewn  Sacraments.  "What- 
ever M.  Waagen  may  please  to  assert,  there  is  certainly  nothing  the- 
atrical about  them.  The  beauty  of  ancient  statuary  is  here  animated 
and  enlivened  by  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  and  the  genius  of  the 
painter.  The  moral  expression  is  of  the  most  exalted  character,  and 
is  left  to  be  noticed  less  in  the  details  than  in  the  general  composition. 
In  fact,  it  is  in  composition  that  Poussin  excels,  and,  in  this  respect, 
we  do  not  think  he  has  any  superior,  not  even  of  the  Florentine  and 
Roman  school.  As  each  Sacrament  is  a  vast  scene  in  which  the 
smallest  details  go  to  enhance  the  effect  of  the  whole,  so  the  Seven 
Sacraments  form  a  harmonious  entirety,  a  single  work,  representing 
the  development  of  the  Christian  life  by  means  of  its  most  august 
ceremonies,  in  the  same  way  as  the  twenty -two  St.  Brunos  of  Lesueur 
express  the  whole  monastic  life,  the  intention  of  the  variety  being  to 
give  a  truer  conception  of  its  unity.  Can  any  one,  in  sincerity,  say 
as  much  as  this  for  the  Stanze  of  the  Vatican  ?  Have  they  a  com- 
mon sentiment?  Is  the  sentiment  profound,  and,  indeed,  Christian? 
No  doubt  Raphael  elevates  the  soul,  Avhatever  is  beautiful  cannot  fail 
to  do  that ;  but  he  touches  only  the  surface,  circum  prcecordia  ludit ; 
he  penetrates  not  deep ;  moves  not  the  inner  fibres  of  our  being :  for 
why  ?  he  himself  was  not  so  moved.  He  snatches  us  from  earth,  and 
transports  us  into  the  serene  atmosphere  of  eternal  beauty ;  but  the 
mournful  side  of  life,  the  sublime  emotions  of  the  heart,  magnanimity, 


POUSSIN.  383 

heroism,  in  a  word,  moral  grandeur,  this  he  does  not  express ;  and 
why  was  this  ?  because  he  did  not  possess  it  in  himself,  because  it 
was  not  to  be  met  with  around  him  in  the  Italy  of  the  16th  century, 
in  a  society  semi-pagan,  superstitious,  and  impious,  given  up  to  every 
vice  and  disorder,  which  Luther  could  not  even  catch  a  glimpse  of 
without  raging  with  horror,  and  meditating  a  revolution.  From  this 
corrupt  basis,  thinly  hidden  by  a  fictitious  politeness,  two  great  fig- 
ures, Michael  Angelo  and  Vittoria  Colonna,  show  themselves.  But 
the  noble  widow  of  the  Marquis  of  Pescaria  was  not  of  the  company 
of  the  Fornarina ;  and  what  common  ground  could  the  chaste  lover 
of  the  second  Beatrice,  the  Dante  of  painting  and  of  sculpture,  the 
intrepid  engineer  who  defended  Florence,  the  melancholy  author  of 
the  Last  Judgment  and  of  Lorenzo  di  Medici,  have  with  such  men  as 
Perugino  boldly  professing  atheism,  at  the  same  time  that  he  painted, 
at  the  highest  price  possible,  the  most  delicate  Madonnas ;  and  his 
worthy  friend  Aretino,  atheist,  and  moreover  hypocrite,  writing  with 
the  same  hand  his  infamous  sonnets  and  the  life  of  the  Holy  Virgin ; 
and  Giulio  Eomano,  who  lent  his  pencil  to  the  wildest  debaucheries, 
and  Marc'  Antonio,  who  engraved  them  ?  Such  is  the  world  in 
Avhich  Raphael  lived,  and  which  early  taught  him  to  worship  mate- 
rial beauty,  the  purest  taste  in  design,  if  not  the  strongest,  fine  draw- 
ing, sweet  contours,  of  light,  of  color,  but  which  always  hides  from 
him  the  highest  beauty,  that  is,  moral  beauty.  Poussin  belongs  to  a 
very  different  world.  Thanks  to  God,  he  had  learned  to  know  in 
France  others  besides  artists  without  faith  or  morals,  elegant  ama- 
teurs, rich  prelates,  and  compliant  beauties.  He  had  seen  with  his 
eyes  heroes,  saints,  and  statesmen.  He  must  have  met,  at  the  court 
of  Louis  XIII.,  between  1640  and  1642,  the  young  Conde  and  the 
young  Turenne,  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  Mademoiselle  de  Vigean,  and 
Mademoiselle  de  Lafayette ;  had  shaken  hands  with  Richelieu,  with 
Lesueur,  with  Champagne,  and  no  doubt  also  with  Corneille.  Like 
the  last,  he  is  grave  and  masculine;  he  has  the  sentiment  of  the 
great,  and  strives  to  reach  it.  If,  above  every  thing,  he  is  an  artist, 
if  his  long  career  is  an  assiduous  and  indefatigable  study  of  beauty, 
it  is  pre-eminently  moral  beauty  that  strikes  him :  and  when  he 
represents  historic  or  Christian  scenes,  one  feels  he  is  there,  like  the 
author  of  the  Cid,  of  Cinna,  and  of  Polyeucte,  in  his  natural  element. 
He  shows,  assuredly,  much  spirit  and  grace  in  his  mythologies,  and 
like  Corneille  in  several  of  his  elegies  and  in  the  Declaration  of  Love 


384  APPENDIX. 

to  Psyche :  but  also  like  him,  it  is  in  the  thoughtful  and  noble  style 
that  Poussin  excels :  it  is  on  the  moral  ground  that  he  has  a  place 
exalted  and  apart  in  the  history  of  art. 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  describe  the  Seven  Sacraments,  which  has 
been  done  by  others  more  competent  to  the  task  than  ourselves.  "Wo 
will  only  inquire  whether  Bossuet  himself,  in  speaking  of  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  Ordination,  could  have  employed  more  gravity  and 
majesty  than  Poussin  has  done  in  the  noble  painting,  so  well  preserved, 
in  the  gallery  of  Lord  Ellesmere.  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  in  this  as 
in  the  other  paintings  of  Poussin's  best  period,  how  admirably  the 
landscape  accords  with  the  historic  portion.  Whilst  the  foreground 
is  occupied  with  the  great  scene  in  which  Christ  transmits  his  power 
to  St.  Peter  before  the  assembled  apostles, 'in  the  distance, and  above 
the  heights,  are  descried  edifices  rising  and  in  decay.  Doubtless, 
the  Extreme  Unction  is  the  most  pathetic ;  affects  and  attracts  us 
most  by  its  various  qualities,  particularly  by  a  certain  austere  grace 
shed  around  the  images  of  death;5  but,  unhappily,  this  striking 


I  In  the  first  set  of  the  Seven  Sacraments,  executed  for  the  Chevalier  del 
Pozzo,  now  in  England,  the  property  of  the  Duke  of  Eutland,  and  with  which 
we  are  acquainted  only  through  engravings,  Christ  is  placed  on  the  left  hand ; 
it  is  less  masterly  and  imposing,  and  the  centre  has  a  vacant  appearance. 
In  the  second  set,  painted  five  or  six  years  after  the  former  for  M.  de  Chante- 
loup,  Christ  is  placed  in  the  centre :  this  new  disposition  changes  the  entire 
eifect  of  the  piece.    Poussin  never  repeated  himself  in  treating  the  same  sub- 
ject a  second  time,  but  improved  on  it,  aiming  ever  at  perfection.    And  the 
memorable  answer  which  he  once  made  to  one  who  inquired  of  him  by  what 
means  he  had  attained  to  so  great  perfection,  "  I  never  neglected  anything," 
should  be  always  present  to  the  mind  of  every  artist,  painter,  sculptor,  poet, 
or  composer. 

II  Poussin  writes  to  M.  de  Chanteloup,  April  25, 1644  (Lettres  de  Poussin, 
Paris,  1824),  "  I  am  working  briskly  at  the  Extreme  Unction,  which  is  indeed 
a  subject  worthy  of  Apelles,  who  was  very  fond  of  representing  the  dying." 
He  adds,  with  a  vivacity  which  seems  to  indicate  that  he  took  a  particular 
fancy  to  this  painting,  "  I  do  not  intend  to  quit  it  whilst  I  feel  thus  well- 
disposed,  until  I  have  put  it  in  fair  train  for  a  sketch.    It  is  to  contain  seven- 
teen figures  of  men,  women,  and  children,  young  and  old,  one  part  of  whom 
are  drowned  in  tears,  whilst  the  others  pray  for  the  dying.     I  will  not  de- 
scribe it  to  you  more  in  detail.    In  this,  my  clumsy  pen  is  quite  unfit,  it 
requires  a  gilded  and  well-set  pencil.    The  principal  figures  are  two  feet 
high ;  the  painting  will  be  about  the  size  of  your  Manne,  but  of  better  pro- 
portion."   Felibien,  a  friend  and  confidant  of  Poussin,  likewise  remarks 
(Entretiens,  etc.,  part  iv.,  p.  293),  that  the  Extreme   Unction  was  one  of  the 
paintings  which  pleased  him  most.     We  learn  at  length,  from  Poussin's  let- 


POUSSIN.  385 

composition  has  almost  totally  disappeared  under  the  black  tint, 
which  has  little  by  little  gained  on  the  other  colors,  and  obscured 
the  whole  painting,  so  that  we  are  well-nigh  reduced  to  the  engraving 
of  Pesne,  and  the  beautiful  drawing  preserved  in  the  museum  of  the 
Louvre.1 

Most  unhappily  a  technical  error,  into  which  even  the  most  incon- 
siderable painter  would  not  now  fall,  has  deprived  posterity  of  one  half 
of  Poussin's  labors.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  covering  his  canvas  with 
a  preparation  of  red,  which  has  been  changed  by  the  effect  of  time 
into  black,  and  thus  absorbed  the  other  colors,  destroying  the  effect 
of  the  etherial  perspective.  As  every  one  knows,  this  does  not  occur 
with  a  white  preparation,  which,  instead  of  destroying  the  colors, 
preserves  them  for  a  length  of  time  in  their  original  state.  This  last 
process  Poussin  appears  to  have  adopted  in  the  Moses  striking  the 
Rock  with  his  Staff,  incomparably  the  finest  of  all  the  Strilcings  of  the 
RocTc  which  proceeded  from  his  pencil.  This  masterpiece  is  well 
known,  from  the  engraving  by  Baudet,  and  has  passed,  with  the 
Seven  Sacraments,  from  the  Orleans  gallery  into  the  collection  at 
Bridgewater.  What  unity  is  in  this  vast  composition,  and  yet  what 
variety  in  the  action,  the  pose,  the  features  of  the  figures !  It  con- 
sists of  twenty  different  pictures,  and  yet  is  but  one ;  and  not  even 
one  of  the  episodes  could  be  taken  away  without  considerable  injury 
to  the  ensemble  of  the  piece.  At  the  same  time,  what  fine  coloring ! 
The  impastation  is  both  solid  and  light,  and  the  colors  are  combined 
in  the  happiest  manner.  No  doubt  they  might  possess  greater  bril- 
liancy ;  but  the  severity  of  the  subject  agrees  well  with  a  moderate 
tone.  It  is  important  to  remember  this.  In  the  first  place,  every 
subject  demands  its  proper  color :  in  the  second,  grave  subjects  re- 
quire a  certain  amount  of  coloring,  which,  however,  must  not  be 


ters,  that  he  finished  it  and  sent  it  into  France  in  this  same  year,  1644. 
Felibien  informs  us  that  in  1646  he  completed  the  Confirmation,  in  1647  the 
Baptwm,  the  Penance,  the  Ordination  and  the  Eucharist,  and  that  lie  sent  the 
last  sacrament,  that  of  Marriage,  at  the  commencement  of  the  year  1648. 
Bellori  (le  Vite  de  Pittori,  etc.,  Eome,  1672)  gives  a  full  and  detailed  descrip- 
tion of  the  Extreme  Unction ;  and,  as  he  lived  with  Poussin,  it  seeuis  credible 
that  his  explanations  are  for  the  most  part  those  he  had  himself  received 
from  the  great  artist. 

1  The  drawing  of  the  Extreme  Unction  is  at  the  Louvre ;  the  drawings  of 
the  five  other  sacraments  are  in  the  rich  cabinet  of  M.  de  la  Salle,  that  of  the 
seventh  is  the  property  of  the  well-known  print  seller,  M.  Defer. 

17 


APPENDIX. 

exceeded.  Although  the  highest  art  does  not  consist  in  coloring,  it 
would  nevertheless  be  folly  to  regard  it  as  of  small  importance :  for, 
in  that  case,  drawing  would  be  every  thing,  and  color  might  be  alto- 
gether dispensed  with.  In  attempting  too  far  to  please  the  eye,  the 
risk  is  incurred  of  not  going  beyond  and  penetrating  to  the  soul.  On 
the  other  hand,  want  of  color,  or  what  is  perhaps  still  worse,  a  dis- 
agreeable, crude,  and  improper  coloring,  while  it  offends  the  eye,  like- 
wise impairs  the  moral  effect,  and  deprives  even  beauty  of  its  charm. 
Color  is  to  painting  what  harmony  is  to  poetry  and  prose.  There  is 
equal  defect  whether  in  the  case  of  too  much  or  too  little  harmony, 
while  one  same  harmony  continued  must  be  looked  upon  as  a  serious 
fault.  Is  Corneille  happily  inspired  ?  His  harmony,  like  his  words, 
are  true,  beautiful,  admirable  in  their  variety.  The  tones  differ  with 
his  different  characters,  but  are  always  consistent  with  the  conditions 
of  harmony  imposed  by  poesy.  Is  he  negligent  ?  his  style  then  be- 
comes rude,  unpolished,  at  times  intolerable.  The  harmony  of  Racine 
is  slightly  monotonous,  his  men  talk  like  women,  and  his  lyre  has  but 
one  tone,  that  of  a  natural  and  refined  elegance.  There  is  but  one 
man  amongst  us  who  speaks  in  every  tone  and  in  all  languages,  who 
has  colors  and  accents  for  every  subject,  naive  and  sublime,  vividly 
correct  yet  unaffectedly  simple.  Sweet  as  Eacine  in  his  lament  of 
Madame,  masculine  and  vigorous  as  Corneille  or  Tacitus  when  he 
comes  to  describe  Retz  or  Cromwell,  clear  as  the  battle  trumpet 
when  his  strain  is  Rocroy  or  Conde,  suggestive  of  the  equal  and  va- 
ried flow  of  a  mighty  river  in  the  majestic  harmony  of  his  Discourse 
on  Universal  History,  a  History  which,  in  the  grandeur  and  extent 
of  its  composition,  in  its  vanquished  difficulties,  its  depth  of  art, 
where  art  even  ceases  to  appear  as  such,  in  its  perfect  unity,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  almost  infinite  variety  of  tone  and  style,  is  perhaps 
the  most  finished  work  which  has  ever  come  from  the  hand  of  man. 
To  return  to  Poussin.  At  Hampton  Court,  where,  by  the  side  of 
the  seven  cartoons  of  Raphael,  the  nine  magnificent  Montegnas  repre- 
senting the  triumph  of  Caesar,  and  the  fine  portraits  of  Albert  Durer 
and  Holbein,  French  art  makes  so  small  a  figure,  there  is  a  Poussin' 
of  particularly  fine  color,  Satyrs  finding  a  Nymph.  The  transpa- 
rent and  lustrous  body  of  the  nymph  forms  the  entire  picture.  It  is 

1  There  is  here  likewise  a  charming  Francis  II.,  wholly  from  the  hand  of 
Clouet,  and  the  portrait  of  Fenelon  by  Kigaud,  which  may  he  the  original  or 
at  all  events  is  not  inferior  to  the  painting  in  the  gallery  at  Versailles. 


POUSSIN.  387 

a  study  of  design  and  color,  evidently  of  the  period  when  Poussin. 
to  perfect  himself  in  every  branch  of  his  art,  made  copies  from  Titian. 

Time  fails  us  to  give  the  least  idea  of  the  rich  gallery  of  the  Mar- 
quess of  Westminster,  in  Grosvenor-street.  We  refer  for  this  to  what 
M.  Waagen  has  said,  vol.  ii.,  p.  113-130.  The  Flemish  and  Dutch 
schools  preponderate  in  this  gallery.  One  sees  there  in  all  their  glory 
the  three  great  masters  of  that  school,  Eubens,  Van  Dyck,  and  Kem- 
brandt,  accompanied  by  a  numerous  suite  of  inferior  masters,  at 
present  much  in  vogue,  Hobbema,  Cuyp,  Both,  Potter,  and  others, 
who,  to  our  idea,  fade  completely  before  some  half-dozen  by  Claude 
of  all  sizes,  of  every  variety  of  subject,  and  nearly  all  of  the  best  time 
of  the  great  landscape-painter,  between  1651  and  1661.  Of  these 
paintings,  the  greatest  and  most  important  is  perhaps  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  Poussin  appears  worthily  by  the  side  of  Lorrain  in  the 
gallery  at  Grosvenor-street.  M.  Waagen  admires  particularly  Calisto 
changed  into  a  Sear,  and  placed  by  Jupiter  among  the  Constellations. 
and  still  more  a  Virgin  with  the  infant  Jesus  surrounded  by  Angel*. 
He  extols  in  this  morceau  the  surpassing  clearness  of  coloring,  the 
noble  and  melancholy  sentiment  of  nature,  together  with  a  warm  and 
powerful  tone.  M.  Waagen  places  this  painting  amongst  the  master- 
pieces of  the  French  painter  (gehdrt  zu  dem  vortrefflichsten  was  ich  ton 
ihm  kenne).  Whilst  fully  concurring  in  this  judgment,  we  beg  leave 
to  point  out  in  the  same  gallery  two  other  canvases  of  Poussin,  two 
delicious  pieces  from  the  easel,  first  a  touching  episode  in  Mosex  strik- 
ing the  Rock,  in  the  gallery  of  Lord  Ellesruere,  of  a  mother  who. 
heedless  of  herself,  hastens  to  give  her  children  drink,  whilst  their 
father  bends  in  thanksgiving  to  God ;  the  other,  Children  at  play. 
Never  did  a  more  delightful  scene  come  from  the  pencil  of  Albano. 
Two  children  look,  laughing,  at  each  other;  another  to  the  right 
holds  a  butterfly  on  his  finger ;  a  fourth  endeavors  to  catch  a  butter- 
fly which  is  flying  from  him ;  a  fifth,  stooping,  takes  fruit  from  a 
basket. 

But  we  must  quit  the  London  galleries  to  betake  ourselves  to  that 
which  forms  the  ornament  of  the  college  situated  in  the  charming 
village  of  Dulwich. 

Stanislas,  king  of  Poland,  charged  a  London  amateur,  M.  Noel 
Desenfans,  to  form  him  a  collection  of  pictures.  The  misfortunes  of 
Stanislas,  and  the  dismemberment  of  Poland  left  on  M.  Desenfans 
hands  all  he  had  collected ;  these  he  made  a  present  of  to  a  friend  of 


APPENDIX. 

his,  M.  Bourgeois,  a  painter,  who  still  further  enriched  this  fine  col- 
lection, and  bequeathed  it,  at  his  death,  to  Dulwich  College,  where 
it  now  is  in  a  very  commodious  and  well-lighted  building.  It  con- 
sists of  nearly  350  paintings.  M.  Waagen,  who  visited  it,  pronounces 
judgment  with  some  severity.  The  catalogue  is  ill-compiled,  it  is 
true,  but  in  this  it  does  not  differ  from  numerous  other  catalogues. 
Mediocrity  is  frequently  placed  side  by  side  with  excellence,  and 
copies  given  as  originals ;  this  is  the  case  with  more  than  one  gallery. 
This  one,  however,  has  to  us  the  merit  of  containing  a  considerable 
number  of  French  paintings,  to  some  of  which  even  M.  Waagen  can- 
not refuse  his  admiration. 

We  will,  first  of  all,  mention  without  describing  them,  a  Lenain, 
two  Bourguignons,  three  portraits  by  Eigaud,  or  after  Eigaud,  a 
Louis  XIV.,  a  Boileau,  and  another  personage  unknown  to  us,  two 
Lebruns,  the  Massacre  of  the  Innocents,  and  Horatius  Codes  defend- 
ing the  Bridge,  in  which  M.  Waagen  discovers  happy  imitations  of 
Poussin,  three  or  four  Gaspars  and  seven  Claude  Lorrains,  the  beauty 
of  most  of  which  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  their  authenticity ;  to- 
gether with  a  very  fine  Fete  champetre  by  Watteau,  and  a  View  near 
Rome,  by  Joseph  Vernet.  Of  Poussin,  the  catalogue  points  out 
eighteen,  of  which  the  following  is  a  list : 

No.  115.  The  Education  of  Bacchus ;  142,  a  Landscape ;  249,  a 
Holy  Family  ;  253,  the  Apparition  of  the  Angels  to  Abraham  ;  260, 
a  Landscape ;  269,  the  Destruction  of  Niobe ;  279,  a  Landscape; 
291,  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi;  292,  a  Landscape;  295,  the  In- 
spiration of  the  Poet;  300,  the  Education  of  Jupiter ;  305,  the 
Triumph  of  David  ;  310,  the  Flight  into  Egypt;  315,  Renald  and 
Armida  ;  316.  Venus  and  Mercury ;  325,  Jupiter  and  Antiope ; 
336,  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  ;  352,  Children. 

Of  these  eighteen  pictures,  M.  Waagen  singles  out  five,  which  he 
thus  characterizes : 

The  Assumption  of  the  Virgin,  No.  336.  In  a  landscape  of  power- 
ful poesy,  the  Virgin  is  carried  off  to  heaven  in  clouds  of  gold :  a 
small  picture,  of  which  the  sentiment  is  noble  and  pure,  the  coloring 
strong  and  transparent  (in  der  Farle  Icraftiges  und  Iclaares  Bild), 
Children,  No.  352.  Eeplete  with  loveliness  and  charm.  The 
Triumph  of  David,  No.  305.  A  rich  picture,  but  theatrical. 

Jupiter  suclcled  by  the  goat  Amalthea,  No.  300.  A  charming 
Composition,  transparent  tone.  A  Landscape,  No.  260,  A  well- 


poussnsr.  389 

drawn  landscape,  breathing  a  profound  sentiment  of  nature;  but 
which  has  become  rather  blackened. 

We  are  unable  to  recognize  in  the  Triumph  of  David  the  theatri- 
cal character  which  shocked  M.  Waagen.  On  the  contrary,  we  per- 
ceive a  bold  and  almost  wild  expression,  a  great  deal  of  passion  finely 
subdued. 

A  triumph  must  always  contain  some  formality ;  here,  however, 
there  is  the  least  possible,  and  that  with  which  we  are  struck  is  its 
vigor  and  truth  to  nature.  The  giant's  head  stuck  on  the  pike  has 
the  grandest  effect :  and  we  believe  that  the  able  German  critic  has, 
in  this  instance,  likewise  yielded  to  the  prejudices  of  his  country, 
which,  in  its  passion  for  what  it  styles  reality,  fancies  it  perceives 
the  theatrical  in  whatever  is  noble.  "We  admit  that  at  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  under  Louis  XIV.  and  Lebrun,  the  noble 
was  merged  in  the  theatrical  and  academic ;  but  under  Louis  XIII. 
and  the  Eegency,  in  the  time  of  Corneille  and  Poussin,  the  academic 
and  theatrical  style  was  wholly  unknown.  "We  entreat  the  sagacious 
critic  not  to  forget  this  distinction  between  the  divisions  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  nor  to  confound  the  master  with  his  disciples,  who. 
although  they  were  still  great,  had  slightly  degenerated,  and  who 
were  oppressed  by  the  taste  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV. 

But  our  gravest  reproach  against  M.  Waagen  is,  that  he  did  not 
notice  at  Dulwich  numerous  morceaivx  of  Poussin,  which  well  merited 
his  attention ;  amongst  others,  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi,  far  supe- 
rior, for  its  coloring,  to  that  in  the  Museum  at  Paris ;  and,  above  all, 
a  picture  which  seems  to  us  a  masterpiece  in  the  difficult  art  of  con- 
veying a  philosophic  idea  under  the  living  form  of  a  myth  and  an 
allegory. 

In  this  art,  Poussin  excelled :  he  is  pre-eminently  a  philosophical 
artist,  a  thinker  assisted  by  all  the  resources  of  the  science  of  design. 
He  has  ever  an  idea  which  guides  his  hand,  and  which  is  his  main 
object.  Let  us  not  tire  to  reiterate  this :  it  is  moral  beauty  which 
he  everywhere  seeks,  both  in  nature  and  humanity.  As  we  have 
stated  in  relation  to  the  sacrament  of  Ordination,  the  landscapes  of 
Poussin  are  almost  always  designed  to  set  off  and  heighten  human 
life,  whilst  Claude  is  essentially  a  landscape  painter,  with  whom  both 
history  and  humanity  are  made  subservient  to  nature.  Subjects  de- 
rived from  Christianity  were  exactly  suited  to  Poussin,  inasmuch  as 
they  afforded  the  sublimest  types  of  that  moral  grandeur  in  which 


390  APPENDIX. 

he  delighted,  although  we  do  not  see  in  him  the  exquisite  piety  of 
Lesueur  and  Champagne;  and  if  Christian  greatness  speaks  to  his 
soul,  it  appears  to  do  so  with  no  authority  beyond  that  of  Phocion, 
of  Scipio,  or  of  Germanicus.  Sometimes  neither  sacred  nor  profane 
history  suffices  him:  he  invents,  he  imagines,  he  has  recourse  to 
moral  and  philosophic  allegory.  It  is  here,  perhaps,  that  he  is  most 
original,  and  that  his  imagination  displays  itself  in  its  greatest  free- 
dom and  elevation.  Arcadia  is  a  lesson  of  high  philosophy  under 
the  form  of  an  idyll.  The  Testament  of  Eudamidas  portrays  the 
sublime  confidence  of  friendship.  Time  Rescuing  Truth  from  the 
assaults  of  Envy  and  Discord,  the  Ballet  of  Human  Life,  are  cele- 
brated models  of  this  style.  We  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet 
at  Dulwich  with  a  work  of  Poussin's  almost  unknown,  and  of  whose 
existence  we  had  not  even  an  idea,  sparkling  at  the  same  time  with 
the  style  we  have  been  describing,  and  with  the  most  eminent  quali- 
ties of  the  chief  of  the  French  school. 

This  work,  entirely  new  to  us,  is  a  picture  of  very  small  size, 
marked  No.  295,  and  described  in  the  catalogue  as  The  Inspiration 
of  the  Poet,  a  delightful  subject,  and  treated  in  the  most  delightful 
manner.  Fancy  the  freshest  landscape,  in  the  foreground  a  harmo- 
nious group  of  three  personages.  The  poet,  on  bended  knee,  carries 
to  his  lips  the  sacred  cup  which  Apollo,  the  god  of  poesy,  has  pre- 
sented to  him.  Whilst  he  quaffs,  inspiration  seizes  him,  his  face  is 
transfigured,  and  the  sacred  intoxication  becomes  apparent  ha  the 
:notion  of  his  hands  and  his  whole  body.  Beside  Apollo,  the  Muse 
prepares  to  collect  the  songs  of  the  poet.  Above  this  group,  a 
genius,  frolicking  in  air,  weaves  a  chaplet,  whilst  other  genii  scatter 
flowers.  In  the  background,  the  clearest  horizon.  Grace,  spirit, 
depth — this  enchanting  composition  unites  the  whole.  Added  to 
this,  the  color  is  well-grounded  and  of  great  brilliancy. 

It  is  very  singular  that  neither  Bellori  nor  Felibien,  who  both  lived 
on  terms  of  intimacy  with  Poussin,  and  are  still  his  best  historians, 
say  not  a  word  of  this  work.  It  is  not  referred  to  in  the  catalogues 
of  Florent  Lecomte,  of  Gault  de  St.  Germain,  or  of  Castellan ;  nor 
does  M.  Waagen  himself,  who,  having  been  at  Dulwich,  must  have 
seen  it  there,  make  the  least  mention  of  it.  We  are,  therefore,  igno- 
rant in  what  year,  on  what  occasion,  and  for  whom  this  delicious 
little  painting  was  executed :  but  the  hand  of  Poussin  is  seen  through- 
out, in  the  drawing,  in  the  composition,  in  the  expression.  Nothing 


POUSSEST.  391 

theatrical  or  vulgar :  truth  combined  with  beauty.  The  whole  scene 
conveys  unmixed  delight,  and  its  impression  is  at  once  serene  and 
profound.  In  our  idea,  The  Inspiration  of  the  Poet  may  be  ranked 
as  almost  equal  with  The  Arcadia. 

Notwithstanding  this,  The  Inspiration  has  never  been  engraved  • 
at  least  we  have  not  met  with  it  in  any  of  the  rich  collections  of  en- 
gravings from  Poussin  we  have  been  enabled  to  consult,  those  of  M. 
de  Baudicour,  of  M.  Gatteaux,  member  of  the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts, 
and  lastly,  the  cabinet  of  prints  in  the  Biblioih&que  Rationale.  We 
hope  that  these  few  words  may  suggest  to  some  French  engraver  the 
idea  of  undertaking  the  very  easy  pilgrimage  to  Dulwich,  and  making 
known  to  the  lovers  of  national  art  an  ingenious  and  touching  pro- 
duction of  Poussin,  strayed  and  lost,  as  it  were,  in  a  foreign  collec- 
tion. 


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OF  A 

New  and  Splendid  Library  Edition 
POPULAR  POETS  AND  POETRY  OF  BRITAIN 

EDITED,  WITH  BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  CRITICAL  NOTICES, 
BY  THE  REV.  GEORGE  GILFILLAN, 

AUTHOR  OF   "GALLERY   OF   LITERARY   PORTRAITS,"    "  BARDS  OF  THK  BIBLE,"  ETC. 

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14  Strangely  enough,  we  have  never  had  as  yet  any  thing  at  all  approaching  a  satis- 
factory edition  of  the  English  poets.  We  have  had  Johnson's,  and  Bell's,  and  Cooke's, 
and  Sharpe's  small  sized  editions — we  have  had  the  one  hundred  volume  edition  from 
the  Chiswick  press — we  have  had  the  double-columned  editions  of  Chalmers  and  Ao- 
'Icrson — and  we  have  the,  as  yet,  imperfect  Aldinj  edition  ;  but  no  series  has  hithertfl 
given  evidence  that  a  man  of  cultivated  taste  and  research  directed  the  whole." — Athen. 

The  splendid  series  of  books  now  offered  to  the  public  at  such  an  unusually  low 
rate  of  ch'arge,  will  be  got  up  with  all  the  care  and  elegance  which  the  present  advanced 
state  of  the  publishing  art  can  command. 

The  well-known  literary  character  and  ability  of  the  editor  is  sufficient  guaranty  for 
the  accuracy  and  general  elucidation  of  the  text,  while  the  paper,  printing,  and  binding 
of  the  volumes  will  he  of  the  highest  class,  forming,  in  these  respects,  a  striking  contrast 
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superiority  in  production  with  low  prices. 

Under  the  impression  that  a  chronological  issue  of  the  Poets  would  not  be  so  ac- 
ceptable as  one  more  diversified,  it  has  been  deemed  advisable  to  intermix  the  earlier 
and  the  later  Poets.  Care,  however,  will  be  taken  that  either  the  author  or  the  volumes 
are  in  themselves  complete,  as  published  ;  so  that  no  purchaser  discontinuing  the  series 
at  any  time,  will  be  possessed  of  imperfect  books. 

The  absence  in  the  book  market  of  any  handsome  uniform  series  of  the  Popular  Brit 
Ish  Poets,  at  a  moderate  price,  has  induced  the  publishers  to  project  the  present  edition, 
under  the  impression  that,  produced  in  superior  style,  deserving  a  place  on  the  shelves 
of  the  best  libraries,  and  offered  at  less  than  one  half  the  usual  selling  price,  it  will  meet 
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T!ie  series  will  conclude  with  a  few  volumes  of  fugitive  pieces,  and  a  History  01 
British  Poetry,  io  which  selections  will  be  given  from  the  writings  of  those  author* 
whose  works  do  iiot  possess  sufficient  interest  to  warrant  their  publication  as  a  whols. 

It  is  believed  that  this  will  render  the  present  edition  of  the  British  Poets  the  rrnwl 
complete  which  has  ever  been  issued,  and  secure  for  it  extensive  support.  The  series  i» 
Intended  to  include  the  following  authors : — 


ADDISON. 

COWPER. 

GRAIIAME.                 OPIE. 

SPENSER. 

AKENSIDE. 

CRABBE. 

GRAY.                           PARNELL. 

SUCKLING. 

ARMSTRONG. 

CRA8HAW. 

GREEN.                        PENROSE. 

SURREY. 

BARBAULD. 

CUNNINGHAM.        HAMILTON,  W.        PERCY. 

SWIFT. 

BEATT1E. 

DAVIE8. 

HARRINGTON.          POPE. 

TANNAOTLL. 

BLAIR. 

DENUAM. 

HERBERT.                  PRIOR. 

THOMSON. 

BLOOMFIELD. 

DONNE. 

HERR1CK.                   QUARLES. 

TICKELL. 

BRUCE. 

DRAYTON. 

HOGG.                         RAMSAY. 

V  A  UGH  AN,  tt 

BURNS. 

DRUMMOND. 

JAMES   I.                     ROGERS. 

WALLER. 

BTTTLER, 

DRYDEN. 

JONES.                          RO8COMMON. 

WARTON,  J. 

BYRON. 

DUNBAB. 

JOHNSON.                   ROSS. 

WARTON,  T. 

CAMPBELL. 

DYER. 

JON8ON.                      SACKVILLE. 

WATTS. 

CAREW. 

FALCONER. 

LKYDEN.                     SCOTT,  J 

WHITE,  H.  » 

OHATTERTON. 

FERGUSSON. 

LLOYD.                        SCOTT,  SI  I  W. 

WITHER. 

OHAUCKR. 

FLETCHER,  O 

LOGAN.                        SHAKSPEAKE. 

WILKIE. 

CHURCHILL. 

GAY. 

MACPHEMON.          SHKI.LEY. 

WOLCOTT. 

OLARE. 

GIFFORD. 

MA1.1.STT.                  SIIENSTONE. 

•WOI.FE. 

COLERIDGE. 

GLOVER. 

MARVEL.                    SMART. 

WYATT. 

COLLINS. 

trOLDSMITH. 

MILTON.                      SMOLLETT. 

TOUNfl. 

OOWLEY. 

GOWER. 

MOORE.                        6OMERVILLE, 

The  following  Authors  are  now  ready  : 

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"  It  is  praise  enough  to  say  of  a  writer,  that,  in  a  high  department  of  literature,  i» 
which  many  eminent  writers  have  distinguished  themselves,  be  has  had  no  equal ;  and 
this  may,  with  strict  justice,  be  said  of  Addison.  .  .  .  He  is  entitled  to  be  considered 
not  only  as  the  greatest  of  the  English  essayists,  but  as  the  forerunner  of  the  great  Eng- 
lish novelists.  His  best  essays  approach  near  to  absolute  perfection ;  nor  is  their  ex- 
cellence more  wonderful  than  their  variety.  His  invention  never  seems  to  flag:  Hor  ia 
he  ever  under  the  necessity  of  repeating  himself,  or  of  wearing  out  a  subject" — 3fa- 
caulay. 

"  He  was  not  only  the  ornament  of  his  age  and  country,  but  he  reflects  dignity  or 
the  nature  of  man.  He  has  divested  vice  of  its  meretricious  ornaments,  and  painted 
religion  and  virtue  in  the  modest  and  graceful  attire  which  charm  and  elevate  the 
neart." — Dr.  Anderson. 

"  In  Addison  the  reader -will  find  a  rich  and  chaste  vein  of  humor  and  satire ;  lessons 
of  morality  and  religion,  divested  of  all  austerity  and  gloom ;  criticism  at  once  pleasing 
and  profound ;  and  pictures  of  national  character  and  manners  that  must  ever  charm, 
from  their  vivaoity  and  truth."— Dr.  nurd. 

"  Of  Addison 's  numerous  and  well-known  writings,  it  may  be  affirmed,  that  they 
rest  on  the  solid  basis  of  real  excellence,  in  moral  tendency  as  well  as  literary  merit. 
Vice  and  folly  are  satirized,  virtue  and  decorum  are  rendered  attractive :  and  while 
polished  diction  and  Attic  wit  abound,  the  purest  ethics  are  inculcated." — Maunder. 

"  His  glory  is  that  of  one  of  our  greatest  writers  in  prose.  Here,  with  his  delicate 
sense  of  propriety,  his  lively  fancy,  and,  above  all,  his  most  original  and  exquisite 
humor,  he  was  in  his  proper  walk.  lie  is  the  founder  of  a  new  school  of  popular  writ- 
ing, in  which,  like  most  other  founders  of  schools,  be  is  still  unsurpassed  by  any  who 
have  attempted  to  imitate  him.  His  Spectator  gave  us  the  first  examples  of  a  style 
possessing  all  the  best  qualities  of  a  vehicle  of  general  amusement  and  instruction ;  easy 
and  familiar  without  coarseness,  animated  without  extravagance,  polished  without  un- 
natural labor,  and,  from  its  flexibility,  adapted  to  all  the  variety  of  the  gay  and  tht 
serious." — Penny  Cyclopedia. 

"  To  correct  the  vices,  ridicule  the  follies,  and  dissipate  the  ignorance,  which  too 
generally  prevailed  at  the  commencement  of  the  eighteenth  century,  were  the  great 
»nd  noble  objects  the  Spectator  ever  holds  in  view ;  and  by  enlivening  morality  with 
wit,  and  tempering  wit  with  morality,  not  only  were  those  objects  attained  in  an  emi- 
nent degree,  but  the  authors  conferred  a  lasting  benefit  on  their  country,  by  establishing 
»nd  rendering  popular  a  species  of  writing  which  has  materially  tended  to  cultivate  the 
understanding,  refine  the  taste,  and  augment  and  purify  the  moral  feeling  of  successive 
generations." — Clwlmers. 

"He  not  only  brought  a  good  philological  taste  into  fashion,  but  gave  a  pleasing  ele 
r»tion  and  popular  turn  to  religious  studies,  and  placed  Milton  upon  a  pedestal  from 
which  he  can  never  be  pulled  down."— Aiken. 

"It  stands  at  the  head  of  all  works  of  the  same  kind  that  have  since  been  produced, 
ind  as  a  miscellany  of  polite  literature,  is  not  surpassed  by  any  hook  whatever."— 
Chambers. 

14 1  consider  the  spectator  invaluable,  as  containing  on  the  subject  of  religion  all 
that  the  world  would  then  bear.  Had  Addison  or  his  friends  attempted  more,  it  would 
uot  have  been  endured.  The  work  was  a  stepping-stone  to  truth  of  the  highest  order 
wd,  as  such,  our  obligations  to  it  are  great"— John  Wesley 


LORD    MAHON'S    HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND, 

/).  Appleton  <Sf  Company  havef'.st  published, 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND, 

FROM 

THE  PEACE  OF  UTRECHT  TO  THE  PEACE  OF  PAHIB 
BY  LORD  MAHON 

EDITED   BT 

HENRY    REED,    LL.D., 
frof  of  English  Literature  in  the  Univergity  of  Penr.tylvanut 

Two  handsome  8vo.  volumes.     Price  $5. 

Mr.  Macaulay'g  Opinion. 

"  Lord  Malion  nas  undoubtedly  some  of  the  most  valuable  qualities  of  a  hntoria*- 
praat  diligence  in  examining  authorities,  great  judgment  in  weighing  testimony,  and  |TM( 
impartiality  in  estimating  characters." 

Quarterly  Review. 

"  Lord  Mahon  has  shown  throughout,  excellent  skill  in  combining,  as  weF.  as  con- 
trasting, the  various  elements  of  interest  which  his  materials  afforded  ;  he  han  continued 
to  draw  bis  historical  portraits  with  the  same  firm  and  easy  hand  ;  and  no  one  can  laj 
town  the  book  without  feeling  that  he  has  been  under  the  guidance  of  a  singularly  clear, 
high-principled,  and  humane  mind  ;  one  uniting  a  very  searching  shrewdness  with  • 
pare  and  unaffected  charity.  He  has  shown  equal  courage,  judgment,  and  taste,  ia 
availing  himself  of  minute  details,  so  as  to  give  his  narrative  the  pictu  esqueness  of  • 

nemoir,  without  sacrificing  one  jot  of  the  real  dignity  of  history His  History  7 

well  calculated  to  temper  the  political  judgment.  It  is  one  great  lesson  of  modesty,  fc» 
jearance,  and  charity." 

Edinburgh  Review. 

"It  was  with  no  small  satisfaction  that  we  saw  a  history  of  this  period  announced 
from  the  pen  of  Lord  Mahon,  nor  have  we  been  disappointed  in  our  expectations.  Hit 
aarrative  is  minute  and  circumstantial,  without  being  tedious.  His  History  of  the  R* 
beilicn  in  particular  is  clear,  distinct,  and  entertaining.  In  his  judgment  of  persons  he  if 
on  the  whole  fair,  candid,  and  discriminating." 

English.  Review. 

"  Lord  Mahon's  worn  will  snpply  a  desideratum  which  has  long  been  r  -a  ready 
good  history  of  the  last  150  years.  It  is  written  with  an  ease  of  style,  a  :•'  ,iand  of  UM 
•abject,  and  a  comprehensiveness  of  view,  which  evince  the  possession  o  nigh  qualifica- 
tions for  the  great  task  which  the  noble  author  has  proposed  to  hims&if.  Lord  Mahoa 
availi  himself  extensively  of  the  correspondence  and  private  diaries  of  'he  times,  which 

nvei  nnusial  interest  and   life  to  the  narrative The  authorities  quoted  fei 

Spanish  or  French  details  are  always  the  original  ;  and  we  can  hardly  remember  a  refef- 
taoe  of  his  Lordship's  on  anv  subject  which  is  not  to  the  best  testimony  kn«wa  • 
aecemble." 

Sismondi — Histoire  des  Francaii. 

"  Bar  Ie  Prince  Charles  Edouard,  en  1745 — nous  renvoyons  nniqaement  a  I'admL'akk 
lAolt  de  cette  expedition  dans  I'llistoire  de  Lord  Mahon.  Toiites  les  relations  J  mm 
attBparees  otjugees  avec  unesaine  critique,  et  Ie  recit  presentele  vif  interet  d'un  romaa.' 

Profcmor  Smyth — University  of  Cambridge. 

"  I  lar  recommonii  to  other;,  what  I  have  just  had  so  much  pleasure  in  re-nil »5  •• 
idf,  UM  niitory  lately  published  by  Lord  Mahon.  All  that  need  now  be  kaowa  »i  \M 
••  frani  th«  Pea-c  nf  ftrer>lit  to  that  of  Aiz-la^Oha:ielle.  wi.l  he  ther*  foaaa  ' 


L.  Appleton  Jp  Co.'s  Valuable  Publication*. 

DR..  ARNOLD'S    WORKS. 

THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME, 

from  the  Earliest  Period.     Reprinted  entire  from  the  last  English  editioi 
One  vol.,  8vo.    $3  00. 

HISTORY   OF   THE   LATER    ROMAN  COMMON- 
WEALTH. 

Two  vols.  of  the  English  edition  reprinted  entire  in  1  vol.,  8vo.  $2  50. 
"  The  History  of  Rome  will  remain,  to  the  latest  s^e  of  Jie  world,  the  most  atlractire,  Ua 
moit  useful,  and  the  most  elevating  subject  of  human  contemplation.  It  must  ever  form  tix 
basis  oi'a  liberal  and  enlightened  education,  and  present  the  .uost  iinjiortant  subject  to  the  oo»- 
templation  of  the  statesman.  It  is  remarkable,  that  until  the  appearance  of  Dr  Arnold's  vol 
a me»,  no  history,  (except  Niebuhr's,  whose  style  is  often  obscure)  of  this  wonderful  people  ex 
isted,  commensurate  either  to  their  dignity,  their  importance,  or  their  intimate  connectioi 
with  modern  institutions.  In  the  preparation  and  composition  of  trie  history,  Dr.  Arnold  ex- 
jended  many  long  years,  and  bent  to  it  the  whole  force  of  his  great  energies.  It  is  a  wotk  to 
which  the  whole  culture  of  the  man,  from  boyhood,  contributed — most  carefully  and  deepl) 
meditated,  pursued  with  all  the  ardor  of  a  labor  of  love,  and  relinquished  only  with  life.  O! 
the  conscientious  accuracy,  industry,  and  power  of  mind,  which  the  work  evinces — its  clearness, 
dignity,  and  vigor  of  composition — it  would  be  needless  to  speak.  It  is  eminently  calculated  to 
delight  and  instruct  both  the  student  and  the  miscellaneous  reader."—  Boston  Courier. 

m. 
LECTURES  ON  MODERN  HISTORY. 

Delivered  in  Lent  Term,  1842,  with  the  Inaugural  Lecture  delivered  in  1841. 

Edited,  with  a  Preface  and  Notes,  by  Henry  Reed,  M.  A.,  Prof,  of  English 

Literature  in  the  University  of  Pa.     12mo.     $125. 

"  The  Lectures  are  eight  in  number,  and  furnish  tie  best  possible  introduction  to  a  philosophi- 
cal study  of  modern  history.  Prof.  Reed  has  added  "really  to  the  worth  and  interest  of  the  vol- 
ume, by  appending  to  each  lecture  such  extracts  from  Dr.  Arnold's  other  writings  as  would 
more  fully  illustrate  its  prominent  points.  The  notes  and  appendix  which  he  Iris  thus  furnished 
are  exceedingly  valuable." — Courier  and  Enquirer. 

RUGBY  SCHOOL  SERMONS. 

Sermons  preached  in  the  Chapel  of  Rugby  School,  with  an  Address  before 

Confirmation.     One  volume,  ISmo.     50  cts. 

"  There  are  thirty  Sermons  in  this  neat  little  volume,  which  we  cordially  recommend  to  pa- 
rents and  01  hers,  for  the  use  of  the  young,  as  a  guide  and  incentive  to  deep  earnestness  in  mat 
Mrs  of  religious  belief  and  conduct ;  as  a  book  which  will  interest  all  by  its  sincerity,  and  espe- 
cially those  who  have  become  acquainted  with  Dr.  A.  through  his  Life  and  Letters,  recent]) 
published  by  the  Appletons." — Evening  Post. 

MISCELLANEOUS  WORKS. 

With  nine  additional  Essays,  not  included  in  the  English  collection.     Ont 

volume,  8vo.     $2  00. 

"  This  vo'ume  includes  disquisitions  on  the  '  Church  and  State,'  in  its  existing  British  combi- 
nations—on  Scriptural  and  Secular  History — and  on  Education,  with  various  other  subjects  \A 
Political  Economy.  It  will  be  a  suitable  counterpart  to  the  '  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Dr. 
Arnold,'  and  scholars  who  have  been  so  deeply  interested  in  that  impressive  biography  will  b* 
gratified  to  ascertain  the  deliberate  judgment  of  the  Author,  upon  the  numerous  imjortant 
thomes  which  his  '  Miscellaneous  Works  '  so  richly  and  clearly  announce." 

1'HE    LIFE    AND    CORRESPONDENCE    OF    THOMAS 
ARNOLD,  D.  D. 

•7  Arthur  P.  Stanley.  A.  M.     2d  American  from  the  fifth  London  edition 

One  handsome  8vo.  volume.     $2  00. 

'  This  work  should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  one  who  lives  and  thinks  foi  his  race  aad  CM 
•is  religion  ;  not  so  much  as  a  guide  for  action,  as  affording  a  stimulant  to  ioteUoct »sJ  tat 
**ml  reflection.'  — Prof  C&urcAaiam. 


